Lileks Given Metro Columnist Slot at Strib
By Brian Lambert
James Lileks, who has been through a handful of incarnations at the Star Tribune, most recently evolving from author of the very short and pithy "Daily Quirk" to editor/writer of "Buzz.Mn" on the Strib website, is going to commence regular Friday and Sunday metro column writing more or less alongside Nick Coleman and Katherine Kersten. His column will not, however, and I repeat, will not, be political.
"I'm absolutely delighted," he said this afternoon, even as he was gathering himself to cover "something at 5 o'clock" for Friday's debut. Despite enjoying relatively high standing among conservative bloggers and talk show hosts, some of whom rallied to his cause when it appeared he might be one of those targeted for a buyout last summer, he says, "No, no politics. There's enough of that out there as it is. These will be basic stories, stories not precisely what I've been doing in this market. It'll be a metro column, maybe a little less domestic than what I've been doing."
It would be generous to say the Strib's attitude toward metro columnists is a bit muddled. The paper—under the previous management regime—stole Nick Coleman away from the mostly hapless Pioneer Press. Then, under withering fire from the likes of the right wing bloggers at Power Line, the paper hired Katherine Kersten, a conservative think tanker and one-time Pawlenty advisor to "balance" out Coleman and Doug Grow, who has since exited. (The paper's brass—Anders Gyllenhaal at the time—would never completely cop to trying to modulate attacks on it for excessive "liberal bias" with the hiring of Kersten, but most of us weren't born yesterday.) The resulting "Frick and Frack" routine, with Kersten and Coleman doing a kind of estranged point/counterpoint is imbalanced by Coleman working under standing orders to "report" all his columns while the definition of Kersten's "reporting," by all indications, seems generously confined to phone calls (more than a few with the boys at Power Line, many of us continue to believe).
So, will Lileks, an indisputably talented essayist but no one's idea of a dogged reporter, be required to slog through housing projects, Memorial Day observances, Native American powwows and the aftermaths of senseless violence to feed his column?
"There will be reporting when appropriate," he says. "But there will also be essaying and some navel-gazing, as they say."
His videos, often prominently hyped on the front page, will be a part of his column work, he says. "It's all part of one great big wad."
(I should point out that in the twisted, tiny world we live in, Lileks is one of my stable of freelance writers here at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine. I wouldn't say I'm his boss. But I do get to fire off semi-testy e-mails if he misses a deadline.)
He insists he simply doesn't want to wade into politics, and when and if he does, he'll drop it into his blog. "There are three reasons for avoiding it. One, I have my own blog. Two, I'm not really reliable on issues. I'm all over the map. [I take this to mean he can't be relied on to regularly stoke fears of an Islamo-Facist takeover of public schools]. And three, we already have Nick and Katherine. There's really no place for me in that Manichean dichotomy."
I have no doubt Lileks will turn out entertaining copy. But my gripe has long been that the Strib should allow both Coleman and Kersten to do the same—be entertaining—assuming she can. The "reported column" meme is both tired and unexamined. Basically, it confines people with a voice, people hired for their voice, to mute that voice.
For a paper such as the Strib, which no one accuses of being too provocative, too entertaining, or enjoyable to read, you'd think some savvy editor/business person would realize that the ability to combine relevant storytelling with an occasional laugh is a rare, wonderful, and valuable commodity and encourage writers capable of such work, especially those with decades of back story in these (local, local) cities, to relax and entertain the customers—maybe even a couple times a week.
Do they have a lot that is any better?
© 2008 MSP Communications, Inc. All rights reserved
Okay...now THIS is my idea of journalism as a closed system: One columnist devoting his column to another columnist, who, when not writing said column, also writes for the first columnist. Now if Lileks will just devote a few inches to talking about you, I believe the gravitational forces between the two columns will cause everything to begin to swirl together in an anti-clockwise fashion, spiraling down into a sucking Black Hole of self-regard from which no word or thought can escape. Cosmic, Dude...
LAMBERT: I knew you'd enjoy it, and that you would probably enjoy it first. Bon appetit.
Posted by: Frogman of Grant on March 12, 2008 at 8:10 PM
Would it help if I think that you're cuter than Lileks?
LAMBERT: No.
Posted by: Tuned In on Washington on March 12, 2008 at 10:18 PM
Most excellent news! I thought the Strib made a huge mistake when they ended the Backfence column and another when they considered buying him out.
LAMBERT: What I'm trying to say is that the Strib, like a lot of disintegrating daily newspapers, would do well to consider the readership impact of regular doses of informed humor. Let a few others try their hand at it. See what happens.
Posted by: ronr on March 12, 2008 at 11:06 PM
James is a talented guy. But I'm hoping for less solipsism and a lot more investment of shoe leather in this column.
But he'll never match Katherine Kersten's gift for parody. Her bi-weekly satirical send ups of rank hypocrisy and intellectual dishonesty are truly priceless.
LAMBERT: Is she opening for Lewis Black?
Posted by: Jim Leinfelder on March 13, 2008 at 8:33 AM
I remember once reading something Lileks wrote at the Minnesota Daily about working in a convenience store, and liking it so much that I clipped it and hanged it up in my dorm room as inspiration. I remember an equally brilliant early Lileks piece that was kind of a parody of Germanic romanticism. I was so impressed by a line of his that the God of the Old Testament "behaves as if his corns were killing him," that I once tried to steal it for a piece I was writing about Don Imus.
But somewhere along the line, and maybe like the rest of us, I think his brain must have become too scrambled by parenthood; I don't know how else to explain late period Lileks, which has for a long time seemed like something you would write if you never deleted, confined yourself to fifteen minutes total production time and cared only about stimulating the 3 percent of brain matter responsible for piling one referential comment upon another in a string of absurd non sequiters to nowhere. I just think he is capable of better. Though I realize he has his fans. As such, I wish he would use his new position to write about politics, or at least slow down and unpack his ideas and be edited and try to make a coherent argument about something.
But I agree with you Brian about the timidness of the Strib approach to column editing and assignment, and not just because I have banged my fist without success against their door like so many other idiosyncratic writers in the region. I say think outside the box: give Kevin Kling a column, or Ann Bauer or Leslie Ball or Beth Hawkins or Steve Perry or Rich Kronfeld. August Wilson, Anne Fadiman, David Carr and John Bowe(a friend)all used to live and work here and were never seen as potential, apparently, by the local paper -- they should find the next home grown original in the making and invite them into the world of daily journalism, before they give up and move East.
LAMBERT: The two local papers demonstrate almost no ear at all for storytelling outside the parameters of stiffly corseted Big "J" journalism. How's that working for them? Lileks has his style, and I'm pretty much in agreement with your take. I remember a very nicely wrought piece he brought back from a Rainbow People's gathering in Michigan. (Think of that -- Lileks and half naked hippies in the woods.) But that was back when papers had the money (and editorial imagination) to send writers out to do stories that had a kind of amorphous cultural element instead of guaranteed, fully identifiable "news" impact almost all of which is reactive. Consequently, readers who enjoy reading stop looking for anything fresh or unexpected in newspapers. Terrific strategy for survival.
Posted by: Paul Scott on March 13, 2008 at 11:24 AM
Is there any chance that bertam jr. might get his own column?
LAMBERT: It seems highly unlikely he would pass even the minimum standards for logic.
Posted by: jenna jameson on March 13, 2008 at 12:24 PM
The Strib dropping the Quirk and Randy Salas' "Web Search" column was about as dumb as it gets. Not only was the Quirk pretty darn unique, the "Web Search" was syndicated, wasn't it? Sheesh. Yet we still are treated a couple times a week to updates on the personal lives of local TV anchors, thanks to C.J. Lucky us.
LAMBERT: As the recorded scientist says to the astronaut who has just disconnected HAL's brain in "2001":
"Its origin and purpose ... still a total mystery."
Posted by: Jason on March 13, 2008 at 3:59 PM
Interesting, but I think we're all really dying to know...what does Nick feel about how Lileks is being paid compared to him, and how does Nick feel about how many times Lileks is published during the week now? Nick's made his feelings known through this space in the past, whats the deal here?
Also, whats your source on Nick's requirement to write deeply reported columns? Nick? I just don't buy it, please provide source. My own sense is at least half his columns are of the unattributed riff and rant variety.
By the way...this column about impounded vehicles published today (whose sentiments I agree with) is one in which any number of bureaucrats could have been singled out and excoriated in the Nick Coleman style...but they'd be Democrats, and Nick doesn't do that. I mean really, couldn't any of the last 10 or 12 consecutive Democratic mayors of St. Paul forced the towing companies to allow these folks access to the personal property in their impounded cars without having to write a state law? Including Chris Coleman? That seems to be conveniently overlooked.
I'm also recalling a column a few years back where Nick treated a photoshopped picture of President Bush flipping the bird as if this really happened. I'm wondering if Nick's requirement to deeply report enhanced or detracted from the quality of this column...
LAMBERT: Since you've made this argument before, I'm assuming your reading of Kersten and Coleman shows no to negligible difference in the shoe leather put into their respective columns?
I'll kick this over to The Great Man, as he likes to be called, and see what he has to say.
Posted by: 108 on March 13, 2008 at 6:20 PM
Er thank you, but that's not neccessary.
I would add that my latest calculations indicate that CJ, topically, is 79% of or about black people, and the rest, give or take, is about TV anchors.
Now, if you add in "Withering Glance", a weekly serving of confusing inside-gay-baseball chat, (in a major metropolitan daily!), you have the case for the Strib truly having not a clue.
"Journalism"?
My pet guinea pig can put out better "journalism".
And he can do a nice imitation of "sad" Katie Couric as well as "happy" Katie Couric.
LAMBERT: We have already noted your fear of people of different colors and homosexuals. But are we now adding pigs and Katie Couric to that list? Are you okay with cats? Birds?
Posted by: bertram jr. on March 14, 2008 at 1:50 PM
Lileks is one of 50 or so Dave Barry wannabes scattered around the country doing Double-A versions of that fellow's once-great work. Writing off into tangents that make no sense and have nothing to do with the core subject isn't funny, it's self-indulgent. You would switch seats on the bus if you were sitting next to such a self-absorbed blatherer.
Let's give CJ extra kudos for now writing about out-of-town anchors, i.e, Mark Suppelsa. CJ must have a man-crush on him (and yes, I'm quite aware of the mixed genders at play here).
Loved your comment, Brian, about the local papers giving people who like to read no reason to read them.
I'm more convinced than ever that there's a conspiracy at work here, with big business (greedy mofos such as Avista) determined to snuff out the independent voices of journalism that have reared up to hold it accountable through the years. If you can't beat newspapers -- those places that buy ink by the drum -- buy them, and then run them into the ground, where they can't hurt you anymore. Or drive them into the arms of people like Dean Singleton, who will ruin them soon enough for you.
Giving James Lileks a sandbox a couple of times a week is going to stop that train? Not bloody likely.
LAMBERT: Lileks' first piece, on the blue laws, wasn't bad. He's an obsessively/compulsively busy guy who I think benefits from some smart editor strongly recommending stories to him ... and urging him to gather fresh insights first-hand.
Posted by: Ethics 101 on March 17, 2008 at 9:57 AM