If I want to learn what is going in in Saint Paul I pick up .... The Highland Villager. Seriously. It does a better job of covering what is happening on the street and in city government than either of the daily rags.
I, a small business owner, learn more about zoning, street projects and business openings from a bi-weekly than I do from either newspaper.

LAMBERT: The nuts and bolts of neighborhood life is always better left to the reporting of people with an investment there.

I was raised in J-school and at the AP that you never insert your own opinion into a "news" story for that very reason - you're reporting what happened, i.e. the "news," and not giving your opinion or take on it. That was for editorials and columnists to do.

That said, I do think that with the advent of the "Internets" (to quote W.) newspapers are no longer the relevant place to go for box scores or blow-by-blow coverage of what Politician A said about Issue X.

I grew up in newspapering and must say even I am bored with today's product. I only read the Strib or PP once in a while and if I do, all I read are the columnists or beat writers with entertaining/unique voices since I already know all the news of the day.

I agree with this post - great, colorful writing that is at once great storytelling and expert analysis of relevant issues (like a daily version of Time or Sports Illustrated) might go a lot farther to keeping the fish wrap relevant and slow its painful death watch.

LAMBERT: The acid test for most news consumers is simply doing a daily "calorie check" of what they read and asking why? Papers have to accommodate this new reality. Self-protective blandness is a losing gamble.

Analysis and insight are the keys.

On my iPhone, using MLB At Bat 2009, I can get video highlights, box scores, standings, game summaries and hear real-time broadcasts of ANY team at any time. That is a killer for newspapers and 10pm sports broadcasts.
I can't get the why, though. That's why I am drawn to the StarTribune Twins blogs and other baseball blogs, especially those who sift through the voluminous baseball data and make some cogent sense of it.
Analysis and insight.

That's why reporters seem much more interesting on Almanac or MPR when being interviewed as part of a roundtable or something. Almanac is so much more interesting when professors or journalists are on than the tired "political panel" concept. Ember Reichgott Junge, David Strom, etc. have absolutely nothing new or interesting to say to me.
Analysis and insight.

My favorite blog these days is fivethirty eight.com. http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/

They apply the dark arts of statistical analysis to a variety of political issues and write about them with clarity to a non-scientific audience. Analysis and insight.

LAMBERT: Don't get me started on "Almanac" and why no one in town has ever dreamed of offering that act a little competition. But your point on "inside baseball" fits with something I've argued for years, namely that in a less formal, more transparent society (i.e. post-internet) what reason is there, really, for not following the sports department's lead and allow other reporters to write with voice and color?

I grew up in SW Minnesota and though that region is internationally known for its productivity the Strib probably ran NE Minnesota stories at a ratio of 20 to 1. And hardly ever a word about the dakotas heck the NY Times covered it more.

LAMBERT: I'm a west central Minnesota guy, and if it wasn't for the occasional goose hunting story the place might as well have been Turkmenistan to the Strib. On the same train of thought, I was baffled when WCCO radio dropped its "correspondents" in out-state Minnesota. To me they brought a broader sense of community, a little regional idiosyncrasy and some humor other than big city irony. But ... of course ... they had no direct revenue hook. No Denny Hecker to "sponsor" them.

For yet another take in a similar vein...but with even more bite...see David Simon's testimony before Congress last week (widely available online). Simon was blunt in his assessment that "high end" journalism is dying and won't be replaced in the online world anytime soon...if ever. Simon foresees a 10 or 15 year "Golden Age" for political corruption just around the corner, as units of government big and small operate without press scrutiny. In an exchange Simon had with Arianna Huffington that was not part of his prepared testimony, Simon said he'll be convinced that online journalism is for real when he runs into a Huffington Post reporter covering a city council meeting or a local school board.

Who's to blame? In Simon's view, it's greedy, indifferent, publicly-traded ownership...which began cutting long before the internet had any impact on the business. Case in point: Simon himself, who was bought out at the Baltimore Sun in 1995 during a corporate-ordered downsizing aimed at boosting profits.

In another sense, though, Simon is an exceptional case...among his fallback jobs after ending his reporting career was creating "The Wire."

LAMBERT: I made reference to that hearing in the post before last, and it is almost impossible to disagree with Simon's conclusions ... hence my assumption that the thing -- big tent journalism -- will crash and all but die before it is transformed in any kind of productive way. The example of city councils and school boards are less persuasive for me than cops and courts because there is a healthy supply of community watchdogs willing to accept free-lance pay to cover/blog/Twitter basic city government stuff. But it takes a whole other kind of cat to follow the kind of stories Simon pulled out of his Baltimore Sun career and built into "The Wire".

Reality conflicts with the notion that covering cops is a job for the seasoned veteran reporter.

The "cop shop" is usually a starter beat for tyros, not the life-long sinecure of veteran reporters as is the tradition with state and national government and politics beats. Cops is a hazing of a beat with lousy hours chasing half-heard calls on the police radio and suffering churlish abuse at the hands of world-weary investigators.

As you'll recall, Woodward got onto Watergate because, as a newcomer to the Post, it fell to him sit in on the arraignment of some guys accused of burglarizing the Democratic Party' Watergate offices. The veteran political reporters had more important things to do.

There are exceptions, of course, such as the great Edna Buchanan during her tenure at the Miami Herald. But generally speaking, coverage of the cop shop falls to the least experienced reporters, not the veterans.

Meanwhile, the Sulzberger's are losing their shirts.

LAMBERT: I'm not disputing the thanklessness of the cop shop beat. There's enough opacity and churlishness there for any reporter's lifetime. But it sure ain't something you can leave to free-lancing "volunteers".

Years ago I could count on picking up the Sunday Strib and reading a solid investigative report. Back then the Strib played their role well in the checks and balances of government. Fast forward to today and the only place I get real analysis is the sports columnists (like the excellent Reusse). Even the recent Petters piece was watered down from what the Strib used to do.

With all the local angles out there on healthcare, energy (like Ethanol), banking (Wells, US Banks, TCF), and declining local government revenues -- where are the hard-hitting pieces? Answer -- read your local blogger, the Strib is nowhere to be found.

You hit it on the head Brian. The lack of local ownership (and culture) has killed the newspaper business. Sadly local TV news is following the same path.

LAMBERT: The toxic effect of out-of-town ownership has been well documented and much bemoaned. But the twist in this Walter Pincus essay is that it comes from as solid a veteran reporter as imaginable, a guy linked into the newsroom and ownership, and HE is arguing for papers to move off their self-protective neutrality and express their concerns for their community in ways that contradict much of what passes for conventional, "objective" wisdom in the modern (corporatized) newsroom.

Two incidents come to mind in reading the Pincus story. 1) Journalists checking their brains at the door. I once wrote about the fabulist John Lott coming to town to testify for conceal/carry legislation then being discussed at the lege (which later passed). Ruben Rosario wrote about Lott for the PiPress, but omitted the fact that Lott basically was an intellectual pariah, and routinely made stuff up. When I asked Rosario about it he said it wasn't his job to sort out who was telling the truth. I just about yelled at him asking well then whose job was it?

2) Another time Eric Black wrote at the Strib about some bloviator who spoke at the Center of the American Experiment who told easily disproved lies about tax incidence in this country. When a letter writer corrected the lies I asked Black why he hadn't looked up and corrected them. His response was that it was a "speech" story and it wasn't his job. I can understand making a mistake in not checking the facts, but defending spreading lies?

I've had enough of "reporters" playing stupid, and believe it plays a part in the demise of modern journalism.

LAMBERT: I of course can't speak to your experiences with Ruben and Eric, (which i guess is me playing dumb), and God knows how many stories with my by-line are floating around guilty of the same sins. But I can tell you from long, hard experience that a flat "he said/he said" story, with no "background" or "partisan context" is not only considered acceptable, but is regarded as the better, more journalistically "fair" and "appropriate" story ... compared to reminding readers what the subject has said in the past and of his or her most egregious blunders. But then ... that's what the internet's for.

Jeez, look at all the trouble I started.

It looks like what we're trying to sort out is re-allocation of responsibilities. Thoughtful long form, well researched stories on important subjects like Charlie Savage's on signing statements or Barstow on the pentagon media whores and the networks still need to be done, but it's not clear newspapers are the places to do them. Unless, there were some way to produce a Saturday/Sunday magazine with the intellectual heft of the NY Times and the distribution of Parade or whatever that thing is that the strib folds into the Sunday paper. Otherwise I guess it's up to the New Yorker, Atlantic and Harpers.

For example, a new Rasmussen poll designed to discover how clueless voters were about cap and trade found that 24% correctly identified it with environmental policy, while 29% thought it had to do with regulating Wall Street, 17% connected it to health care and 30% admitted to being clueless. That condition can't stand, particularly with Republicans, out of ignorance or malice, claiming that cap and trade is a tax, or we are well and truly screwed. Who in the general media will explain the abc's? Except for PBS and maybe 60 Minutes the networks are hopeless. NPR could do okay at it, but wide distribution media? The papers, if they cover the subject at all, will do it in the wankerland that is the op-ed page which is really the fact free zone. Apparently nobody at the originating papers, the syndicates or the local op-ed page editors takes any responsibility for the minimal truth of a factual assertion in a column. Magazines and blogs will provide expert information, but who will sort it out and spread it around?

Newspapers should provide the people who go to the zoning board meetings, check the police blotter, interview the next of kin, etc. However, they have to do this basically as adversaries even to the point of pissing off advertisers. The current problem with the national news is the access whoring in the small, insular town that is big time Washington D.C.

LAMBERT: Again, judging by how and where I look for the really revelatory stuff that matters to me, I get MUCH more of it out of magazines like, as you say, The New Yorker., Atlantic and Harpers than I do out of the Strib. Lack of resources withstanding, my long-standing beef is that papers have accepted a paradigm of their readership that is not all that bright, not terrifically skeptical and very impatient. (This may a projection issue, but I'll let that pass.) The business model of your average Avista dictates a kind of dispassionate minimalism. Don't betray that you care too much, and stick to the "balance" shtick of "he said, she said." Your point on access whoring, particularly in D.C. -- but also on Wall St., as we've seen -- is worth maintaining a constant spotlight. But, silly me, I think it is possible to show up at cocktail parties and make chit chat with people you cover -- provided you don't have some weird emotional need for their friendship.

You and I are part of the problem. We talk around the missing-news problem, we even strategize for and nudge others toward action--but here we are, sitting on our widening bottoms in front of a computer instead of rolling up our sleeves and getting to work. Thus is the nature of the disease known as 'lack of money', also often diagnosed as 'lack of balls', and we talk about how we are 'mad as hell', but then refill the coffeepot and turn the browser page.

A couple of rants ago, you offered up your rage and I offered up an outlet...and then I waited as patiently as I could because you had my contact info and I choose not to stalk up yours. I figured when the time was right and if you felt the inclination to contact me, you would. But, here we are, still waiting for someone else to see our rants and throw money at us, or even better money at someone else and we wouldn't have to do the work or take responsibility for the risk. We could see our ideas produce flowers for someone else--pass me the pitcher, I need a refill.

But, the pitcher is getting empty, and it wasn't going down all that well anyways. Is it time for us to get up and do something? So, let me address your funding concerns--it all boils down to media politics...no, make that media culture...no, it is human nature. People are mostly sheep, but mostly sheep imbedded into positions of power or at least stability; and they stand in the way of true progress as they attempt to preserve the status quo and a world without change--even change they could believe in if it wasn't so scary different!

A live example might help--The Current radio station. The story goes that 5 years ago MPR borrowed $11 million to fund the purchase of the 89.3 radio signal, because they had the idea to change the status quo of radio. Thank God, right? You and I had briefly engaged in a couple emails circa 2002 because I was 'mad as hell' at radio then, and the closest I (as an industry outsider) could get to anyone willing to change radio was you, a media journalist.

A couple years later, MPR overcomes radio malaise, and the lack of action to hopefully deal the first deathblow to status quo radio...the greatest being the sweet revenge of Clear Channel (et al) debt financing. But, speaking of debt, now The Current is fund-scratching hard trying to hold off their creditors as the new sob-story emerges of some $400000+ unexpected debt payment. You ponying up for Bill this fund-drive?

I love The Current and do thank God that Bill got it going. But I don't think we should wait for Bill, or maybe it is Joel Kramer, to take out the next $11 million dollar loan to do the job we see needing to be done. I also am that independent guy who is too independent to be Libertarian or Democratic or Republican...but I can see where the GOP and Libertarians will bristle at a government-funded news outlet, that would likely grow into this large unmotivated and barely productive force in the wrong hands (and who are the right hands, and how much should they be paid even for productive work?).

At the same point, why do we cry for the government or creative public funding? Simple, because we the sheeple refuse to pay even for services that they do enjoy! Refer above to The Current example, where their statistics show that only 1 in 5 listeners contribute to fundraising.

And where are those freeper GOP-like entreprenuers with their private funding models...HA HA, what a joke...they lay cowering on the floor of their money bins, afraid to part with their precious trust fund and mutual fund monies, to actually accept the risk of the free market they claim to champion--they get the Wall Street, Madoffs, and 401k madness they deserve.

Which brings us back to us...in my last comment I mentioned 'the people' and since I was not clear, you took it as the stereotypical 'people' as being socialists or revolutionaries--I just meant people, like you, me, and this cast of characters who read this blog.

If no one is telling you, here in this blog, with your posts and comments here--with each voice providing additional insights, it is already higher journalism than 80% of 'journalism' in this town.

I want to be a person, not one of the sheep; and I want to lift some others out of sheeple status too. Truth is I don't do much on my own for myself, but I've found that I can rile up some passion for others when they need a boost. You need a boost? Let me edit that--You need a boost.

LAMBERT: Damn right I need a boost. But other than moving Happy Hour up to 1 p.m., my own pool of venture capital has, um, abated. I'm all ears if you or anyone thinks/sees away to produce greater impact ... which really is the ambition of any blogger/writer in this forever fragmenting media world. But don't you think that the web -- at the very least -- allows individual expression? Which isn't sheep-like at all, is it? The sheeple charge seems better aimed at mass media which are required to broad-brush themselves for their "consumers".

With all due respect, Brian, we have a name for "he said, she said," "journalism." It's called stenography. It might be considered acceptable "journalism" in your world, but not in mine.

LAMBERT: I had to check what I wrote in response to your comment ... and, hey man, I'm AGREEING with you. It is a sad reality of modern newspapering that so much "he said, she said" drivel is grease-tracked into the paper while stories that provide the kind of context you're talking about -- pertinent and appropriate, I believe -- are discouraged or edited down and out, usually because it smacks of "partisan" to an editor somewhere in the chain.

BTW - Brian - you say, "... compared to reminding readers what the subject has said in the past and of his or her most egregious blunders." That wasn't what was at stake in either of my examples. In the Rosario example the "reporter" ignored Lott's easily findable history ON THIS SUBJECT. On his key study, Lott basically said the dog ate his homework, so he couldn't prove his findings. On the Eric Black CAE report, he could have done one google search to find out that the subject was intensely lying. He said/she said is bad enough, but being lazy and cowardly and then defending it is much worse.

LAMBERT: Again, no disagreement from me. There should a one-graph allowance in every piece using "experts" to remind readers where this guy is coming from and assess the value of his credentials. But papers -- particularly provincial papers managed by transient corporate editors who need to adher to the company line to earn a promotion -- don't operate that way.

There’s a lot to chew on in the Pincus piece. Here’s some observations:

Award-driven journalism. Yes, it’s a bit of a curse. And yes, I saw at the Strib how big resources were put into projects that some editors thought were a big deal without a lot of foot-work reporting done at the front end. Which meant sometimes they declared some project to be a BFD only to be disappointed later when the real reporting showed it was not. But by that time, too much ego and resources had been devoted to pull the plug, or scale it down.

Many times, the best projects come not from editor’s musings, but from beat reporters with expertise who learn by stumbling over an interesting fact that something big or bad is happening that cried out for exposure. Or, because they know and have the respect of people in their topic of expertise, get the tip that turns over the Big Rock.

For example, Steve Brandt at the Strib was writing about mortgage flipping in poor Minneapolis neighborhoods long before the mortgage crisis became a national story. Local beat reporting at its best.

The death of family-owned news organizations, and the curse of 20 percent rates of return on investment.

At 7 or 8 percent return rates, the Cowles family was making big bucks on the Strib. And they were making more than that at times. But when the founders left, the property was owned by third and fourth-generation family members who had no skin in the journalism game. Profits were all they cared about. Result: the McClatchy buy of the Strib. It worked for awhile. But the wunderkind Chair of McClatchy – despite or because of his rock-star love of the Rolling Stone concert life – went a huge step too far: he convinced his board to buy Knight-Ridder and dump the Strib. Who would think 15-20 percent rates of return were sustainable? It turns out a lot of the Captains of Industry in America, including media owners. Guess we know how that turned out….

Pincus on the internet. He’s right about the print versus internet revenue, but not about the future of media. Walter forgot to mention that all the newspaper research shows that no one under 35-40 regularly reads or subscribes to newspapers. I, like he, wish it were not so. But it is what it is. That train has left. No going back.

There’s more to talk about with the Pincus article. Maybe another time.

LAMBERT: From what I can tell the younger crowd may not be subscribing to papers but along the line somewhere they are reading copy produced by newspapers. But you, as an old paper wretch, have to appreciate this coming from a guy like Pincus. I mean, he's as old school as they get.

BL: "There should a one-graph allowance in every piece using "experts" to remind readers where this guy is coming from and assess the value of his credentials".

Umm...why don't YOU try this?

It might help new readers understand what ails you.

LAMBERT: Do my various diseases need any explaining?

I just read Leinfelder's comment about how cop reporting is a job for the rookies. Strangely, he references Bob Woodward and Watergate. Is this tongue in cheek, Jim?

What's the lesson of the Post's Watergate stories? That basic beat reporting can trump the so-called High Poobahs of political reporting in getting to a big story.

No, Jim, it wasn't always the case that cop reporting was considered a lower place in the newsroom. In fact, it's a place where you learn some of the really important reporter skills. And, to this day, it requires high skills to do it right.

Too many so-called "higher skill" reporting jobs engender the kind of lazy reporting that Pincus talks about: lapping up what the Powers That Be feed you, and then substituting opinion for gathering facts.

Offering opinions - excuse me, "analysis" - is easy and cheap - and often wrong. It frequently occurs when so-called journalists are wooed and snookered by the spin doctors.

LAMBERT: There's a big downside to the kind of analysis stuff I'm suggesting ... and it begins with people who don't know enough either through laziness or ineptitude. But I'm taking the glass half full approach and assuming that beat reporters -- people like Mark Brunswick, Dane Smith, etc. know what's going on and should have the license to say so. And obviously, you can/should identify analysis/speculation as precisely that. Smart readers get that shtick ... idiots may not. But a lot of the problem is producing news that idiots can "understand".

Paul: I'm not arguing that the cop shop isn't worthy of an experienced reporter's effort. As I wrote, Edna Buchanan's career is one coruscating exception. There are others in big cities.

But, in general, cops is a beat where less experienced reporters get a chance to make their bones. Yes, as you say, it's a good training ground. Most of it is blotter reporting. I've worked the beat myself, walked into the investigators' offices, looked through the warrants and complaints, it's less complex than a lot of beats. But, yeah, it takes some balls to button hole the investigators. In most cases, it's not a long-term, career beat.

And, no, Paul, my reference to Woodward was not tongue in cheek, but simply that HE got onto the Watergate story when more senior reporters on the Post staff were clueless because, as a relative newcomer to the paper, it fell him to a lower-tier reporter to cover the arraignment of the burglars who eventually came to be known as the "plumbers." he made the most of it and did not cover cops and courts for long.

The problem with going to the handful of good mags for important analysis is that there aren't very many of them, they don't publish all that often, and even then only publish a few stories, and the responses and counter-responses play out over weeks. It's probably better to go a handful of bloggers who are actual experts, as opposed to pundits; for example, Juan Cole on the Middle East, Scott Horton on legal questions, Brad DeLong on economics. The A-list bloggers post frequently, read and respond to each other and to reader comments. I've been reading Kevin Drum on cap and trade, and it's been helpful.

The strib has apparently decided that bar flies are the readership of the future. No doubt they've done focus groups and surveys to prove this is a good business decision, but the bar flies I've known have not been big newspaper fans. The paper still does state, i.e., St. Paul centered political news okay, but the B section seems to have gone over to "if it bleeds, it leads." Chuck Haga has apparently taken the money and run, so there's nobody left at the paper who has any grasp of life in the Red River valley. Were the paper to focus on basically state news, there would at least be a logical role for it; whether it would be an economically viable role, I don't know.

LAMBERT: You're point about "A-list" bloggers -- as opposed to , ahem, "D-listers" -- is very well taken here. If a dying newspaper had the sense to go down with a fight and its head held high it'd approach people like Brad DeLong with a syndication offer. A tenured economics professor consistently in the heart of the debate, regularly interacting with peers and critics is precisely the sort of "dialogue" most papers desperately need. Of course in the case of DeLong, the syndicating papers would have to accept publishing regular blasts at their craven ineptitude.

Well, Jim, I would say that the cop beat in Mpls right now might shed some interesting light on a number of things: political power in Mpls, race relations, and corruption. And crime that affects everyone in the city, and how the mayor and city council are dealing with that. And, I dare say, the form of government in Mpls.

That goes beyond the police blotter. I know something about checking the ususal law enforcement places. A good reporter knows it goes beyond that. That's small change.

If you don't know that, you were just an occasional journalist in the justice world...

Ok, Paul, you win. I can see this isn't an honest discussion. You're the unassailable authority on all that's journalistic. Now you're on the other side of the dance, providing the official quotes. I never made any of the absolute statements you attribute to me. I allowed for the exceptions that you make out like they're daily occurences. I never said cops weren't worthy of coverage. I'm not arguing the beat wouldn't benefit from close scrutiny. All I asserted is that, while it's pretty to think so, that's not how it usually works out.