I dunno, those headshots of Rosenblum are catching some eyes, from what I hear.

Nick always looked like he was being swallowed by that turtleneck....

I do concur that there are some VERY bizarre business decisions going on in this media town....ahem.

I don't disagree that Nick has been treated ignominiously by the skippers of the Titanic. But so what? He remains a beloved figure to those who read him over the years, and that's the important thing.

I learned when being jettisoned by my first wife that it is a form of insanity to expect decency from indecent folks.

LAMBERT: I'm just guessing here, but it's likely you and the ex had a healthier relationship -- at some point -- than Nick ever did with Avista's managers.

I will miss Nick very much. At least we still have Access Hollywood, right?

But as someone who has written for the Strib Op-ed page a few times, I feel compelled to add that there's no deflavorizin' going on over there, for me anyway. Unless maybe its because my stuff already comes in without flavor. Rolling Erma Bombeck style. Unflava Flav.

LAMBERT: I've read your columns, Paul, and they're very good. The Strib could use a dozen more people with your style. "Deflavorizing" is more an issue if you're "staff".

Something I'm curious about, in a rather desultory count I've run up one full-page and two half-page ads for the newbies. Assuming that if the same territory had been sold, say to Macy's for bra ads, it would have brought in a fair amount of revenue, what's the point in trying to sell something that has already been bought. What kind of a reader would not check out T&R? Or, assuming a reader who only buys the paper for the box scores, why would an ad persuade him to check out the new columnists?

Judging from his columns, Coleman's career has taken him to some pretty scummy places, but no place as seedy as the strib op-ed page, which is largely an intellectual and moral slum inhabited by decayed right wing wankers.

LAMBERT: Damn it! You made me laugh while I was drinking, and now I've got orange juice coming out my nose.

Thanks Brian. All I ever wanted in life, working during the summer after high school at Super America on 40th and Lyndale in 1982, was to write like that movie reviewer for the Reader. (I think that was your old gig...) Of course, now with our industry in free fall, I spend my days replaying with my wife the missed windows I had to, say, go to medical school. But my self pity is tempered by the fact that it has seemed since 1982 like the dailies and weeklies were never hiring, ever. All the boomers had the jobs. Then came the internets with all the tubes.

LAMBERT: Yeah, we HAD all the jobs and, as I tell my kids, we HAD all the fun. Emphasis on the HAD part. (That's a gallows humor type joke. It isn't that bad.)

I love to see you spew some on this piece of drek: http://tcp3.com/oezv

Seriously, wtf are they trying to accomplish?

LAMBERT: Mmmmmm, boy.

You guys are all big teases, c'mon, give us some Nick Coleman stories. Exactly how, when and why did he bug the living daylights out of Nancy, what were his odd personal habits in the newsroom? Somebody has to dish here. I wish there were some Nick Coleman out there with an axe to grind about Nick Coleman so we could put some meat on the bones of this watered down soap opera.

LAMBERT: Maybe by this time next week. But it is fair to say that the Nick Coleman you see in the face of Tim Pawlenty is pretty much the Nick Coleman in the face of whatever newspaper manager happens to be running the place, and a certain breed of modern newspaper manager simply can't tolerate a "subordinate" ever disagreeing with them, telling they're out to lunch or writing stories the way he thinks they ought to be written. Assuming a fair level of talent -- which Nick has, and professional standing -- ditto -- newspaper managers used to just shrug off such flak as the cost of doing business, i.e. something that came with their territory. Not so much anymore. "Compliant" is a new high virtue.

Brauer's already pretty well disparaged the Strib's nostalgic on-line aping of TV news circa 1960s, minimal images and atavistic graphics. Lileks, who has a voice for radio and an anchor desk presence for, well, newspapers, should've taken things all the way and donned a plaid sport coat. Otherwise, they had it nailed. It might well have been Stewart A. Lindman reading of the news, sans the MD carnival kits.

In fairness, Lileks is a better producer of video than that bit would indicate. He should be left to produce and edit his own stuff.

The questions remains, though...uh, to what end? As Brauer points out, there's nothing new in this web newscast. I guess it saves the casual consumer from actually reading the website. But is that good for business? And it provides a venue for cross promotion of their new columnists. Though having them unknowingly smile as a "super" of their names appears next to their heads doesn't really communicate whether or not their columns are a good read, or not.

I guess for that assessment you'd need to click out of the webcast and, well, read the damn thing. That's what I did well before the full seven minutes and change of the webcast had elapsed.

Boy, that was a polite non-answer. You and Brauer both sound like you are terrified of Nick. Brauer's correction sounded like he was worried Nick was going to throw down on him in the MinnPost lobby or something (do they have one or are they all virtual?). Is he dangerous or something? I've directed a few complaint at Nick in the past--should I be looking over my shoulder?

LAMBERT: Nick is a sweetheart. The ultimate plush toy. I'm not saying, because he's a friend of mine. He'll have ample opportunity to say whatever he wants in due time.

Your comment on "compliant" hits this Nick nail on the head, Brian. From what I hear from Strib insiders, Avista has little or nothing to do with Coleman's fate. Nancy Barnes is a bloodless corporate type who ought to be farming out customer service jobs from Qwest to India or huddling with Bill McGuire to help him back-date stock options. She has no business in what used to be a free-wheeling, contentious, smooth things over with a shot of Scotch position like boss of a major metro newsroom and she would be handling this just as badly if the Cowles clan still owned the place. Newspaper journalists can be prickly, eccentric types and she can't even look the checkout girl in the eye, in terms of human interaction, much less subordinates with strong contrary views. Ask some Stribbers for their nicknames for her. Or, in honor of the dearly departed, their Nick-names for her.

LAMBERT: Ms. Barnes herself is the embodiment of "compliant".

I'd have bid 5 figures for Nick per annum, how tight is that non-compete and restriction on his other 28 days per month?

LAMBERT: In "deep recession" America $100.00 is five figures.

Sweetheart? Plush toy? Now you are denying me one of my most enjoyable illusions. I rarely agreed with anything he said, but being Irish-American, in my mind Nick was my hero, my Irish Super Fly, kicking tush and breaking glass and bar stools all over the Twin Cities, more heart than brains. Like Ryan O'Reily from Oz, but with a wee better sense of right and wrong. This is like telling that poor Russian in Running Scared, as he's dying in the hockey rink, that the Duke's real name was Marion and he couldn't shoot straight. I need a drink.

I liked what Coleman tried to do. But he came off as such a jerk in the process that I found myself rooting for the other guy (Governor) sometimes.

In Chicago John Kass goes after the pols. But he's clever and I want him to win or at least expose what he's trying to expose.

And that whole "I know stuff" thing. Yeah, we all want columnist who know stuff. But if they have to actually go on record stating that... ugh.

LAMBERT: I guess the notion worth debating is the bit about being "a jerk". It goes without saying that one man's jerk is another man's truth-speaker. But Nick's personality, which obviously annoyed the bejeezus out of some people -- not the least of which were the poor schlubs required to play his "supervisor" in the newsroom -- is not that difficult to mitigate, assuming it doesn't have you on the defensive from the get-go. He likes to argue. So what? There once were newsrooms where editors regarded an argument as a sign of someone's professional pride. All too often disagreement is now "insubordination".

True dat.

Say, any comment on the TV station guy beheading his wife?

You know, the Muslim one out east?

Given your enthusiasm for robust debate, you might want to check out Glenn Greenwald's salon post "the corruption of the cocoon," as it explains why it doesn't happen. It turns out all those chest thumping ideological tough guys are afraid of being challenged, even by a young woman like Rachel Maddow (Rhodes Scholar Oxford Ph.D. and smarter than all of them put together).

BL: In "deep recession" America $100.00 is five figures.

Funny, I'll try that on my next mortgage check and see if Chase will enjoy the humor there.

But I'm serious, just like I was serious when I invited the dinner conversation awhile back to kick around your media wishes.

So Nick signed a Non-compete, and probably some other clauses trying to restrict his activities, but these can only be taken so far before courts throw them out as being onerous. So, if the Strib has him 3 days a month for Op-ex, he should be free to conduct his own business on his other 20 days (I'll even let him have some time off) per month.
--can he blog?
--can he write investigative stories that are posted online, maybe a Truthdig or TPM?
--can he do video?
--can he write a book (and do related publicity that involves regular local contact that might include a 'irregular' column somewhere)?

We can go on, but the options have never been more open, and the chances of any Avista contract interference never less frightening.

LAMBERT: As Coleman's agent I can guarantee he will do damn near anything ... and you'll have to talk him out of the nude scenes.

I understand what you are talking about in the demise of how a newsroom used to operate and that the new folks don't get it. That does make me mad but here's the part of that argument that I have issue with.

The rest of us, to a pretty constant degree, have to be able to "get along" with our boss. I firmly believe there is a distincition between get along and agreeing with but it seems to me that maybe Nick bears part of the responsibility for this. I'm not absolving management but am curious what makes him different that 99% of the rest of the population.

I don't always agree with him but will miss his voice on the Strib pages and look forward to where he makes his voice known.

LAMBERT: What makes Nick -- and what used to make newspapers -- different from "99% of the rest of the population" is he/they were not in the business of necessarily making their "customers" feel happy and comfortable. That's called advertising. Unfortunately, among the many assets of a vibrant newspaper that diminish under the rule of quarterly earnings (and staggering debt) is the courage to say what needs to be said, or at the very least is worth considering. This fretful, anxious attitude is transfered to the editorial staff by way of what stories are ignored, slow-tracked and which reporters/writers are considering "trouble." Nick can annoy the best of them, but unlike line workers at Ace Widget, his job description really said nothing about meekly submitting to the rule of insecure managers.

change is good. new blood is good. sounds as if nick was not performing up to par (according to readership and mgmt not just those insiders that read and respond here and at minnpost) nor was he aligning with what he was requested to produce.

smaller stints for columnists becoming the norm (pun intended). he was also apparently offered a full time features job at strib (a very good job btw at a very good salary as well). now it appears he is just personifying the whiney and bitter tone he was evoking too often in his writings. tough and uncertain times (in the industry and the country) call for resilient and accommodating people not primadonnas.

LAMBERT: There's no disputing he refused to comply with the company line. Meekness though is not exactly a virtue in a newspaper columnist.

There are quite a few alternate realities where Nick hangs on until the end there at the Strib as its metro columnist. All of them involve Nick being a bold personality - but not a jerk, lunatic, …whatever it is that is his reputation. They’re not mutually exclusive, as you seem to suggest. It should be fairly easy to be a bold journalist without being insubordinate. It should be easy to a bold journalist and have people skills.

Be that as it may, Nick’s fate was inextricably linked to Kersten’s. So it wasn’t actually beneficial for Nick to encourage and sometimes abet the shrill chorus of Kersten haters.

You know what that is? That’s irony!

LAMBERT: I truly believe there's an interesting conversation to be had on whether at the Strib today you can be a "bold journalist" and be subordinate to the current editorial ethos. I'm not disputing that to the tender sensibilities of some, old Nicky boy is a "jerk". But the more salient discussion should be over Strib management's discomfort with his "boldness".