It is time to take a bit of a summer stretch and enjoy the weather a bit. I'll be away for a bit—on a camping trip, where I won't have Internet access—but will post again on June 3.

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This one is about as incestuous as it gets. But before I get to all the disclaimers, I have to say I was pulling rotted fascia boards off a shack yesterday while the kerfuffle over KMSP Fox9 was exploding, at least among a tight crew of media colleagues, counterparts, and competitors. In other words, to quote Woody Allen, "I was nowhere near Oakland."

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Other than the usual suspects who see the hand of V. I. Lenin in everything the Star Tribune publishes, from the cop shop beat to the Vikings, everyone wants the Strib to survive. Hell, even Scott Johnson professed his conditional support for a newspaper in Minneapolis -- as long as it promises to regularly associate Cong. Keith Ellison with Louis Farrakhan, the international muslim terrorist conspiracy and repudiates agenda-based reporting.

The nascent "Save the Strib" movement, organized by Strib employees with an entirely understandable personal interest in the paper, has attracted 1700 signees on its Facebook page. Last week it produced a slick video featuring testimonials from the two mayors and other local cultural icons (Louie Nanne, Robyne Robinson, Lou Bellamy, etc.) Everyone professed their love for newspapers. Mayor Coleman even noted his affection for big city columnists ... without directly mentioning his bumptious older brother, Nick, who was just given the bum's rush out of his columnizing job.

So great, we all love the paper with our coffee in the morning, but that isn't going to get anyone anywhere until even the people who want to be saved start engaging in some very unpleasant realpolitik.

Maybe I should do this with always popular bullet points:

*  Any "saved" newspaper, in Minneapolis, St. Paul, Boston or anywhere is going to be a much smaller critter than it is today. Staffs of 130 reporters, photographers, editors are going to have to be reduced by two-thirds, if not more. This is inevitable.

*  Why? Because as we know the advertising model has been broken by the internet and there is no imaginable way to re-coalesce all that revenue (evenn if car dealers had money to advertise) back under one roof in a way that supports a 600-person payroll (counting everyone involved in a big paper's production and delivery). Think wishfully all you want about goosing internet advertising, but that once glistening, healthy horse has left the barn, crossed the river and the county and is running free in the foothills, never to return.

* So ... while bankruptcy courts mull, and some big-ego, deep pocket citizens perhaps consider bottom-feeding the "brand" after the apocalypse-by-debt, those who want to practice a semblance of institutional journalism might want to get serious about asking, "What are the absolutely essential qualities of something we could justifiably call a 'newspaper'?" What beats? How many people? I've been asking this for months and reading all sorts of beard-stroking forums and have yet to hear anyone with a pedigree risk a scenario.

* One reason ... again, I suspect ... is that if those "most read" and "most e-mailed" boxes on every newspaper website mean anything, the most financially remunerative coverage isn't the straight, earnest stuff traditionalists regard as journalistic grail.

* Pretty obviously every big city paper wants to barricade its "primary" content behind a subscription wall, like The Wall St. Journal. Ideally, there would be a secret signal to set this off, a man pumping an umbrella next to the motorcade route, and everyone everywhere in the country would announce it the same day. But no one seems to know what to charge for this -- Standard paper subscription rates? Twenty five cents a story? -- and most I suspect worry that their product as it currently exists wouldn't command much if anything on the paying market. And that would be a lot of insult added to injury.

By now most wonks have read the on-line forum between newspaper silverbacks like ex-Strib editor, Tim McGuire, ex-PiPress managing editor Ken Doctor, "Newsosaur" Alan Mutter , etc.

You can slice stuff like this a thousand different ways, but let me toss out a few excerpts and let you imagine the reality of what these rabbis are getting at, whether they realize it or not.

McGuire: "Everything a print source does must “add value.” Even weather and sports must be presented in ways that distinguish the information from commodity sources."

Charlotte Hall (Orlando Sentinel): "Readers want perceptive and analytical coverage of national and international news, plus advertisers love it, so the A-section stays. Local news, commentary and interactivity with readers are our franchise, so the news reports, the columnists, the editorial page, the letters to the editor and other interactive commentary are our core. Sports [remains and] focuses on opinion, enterprise and analysis.

Alan Jacobson (CEO newspaper design firm): "For 20 years, I’ve been saying that cosmetic redesigns are a waste of time and money. Here’s what needs to be done: Change the editing to include content that is compelling, relevant, interesting and useful to readers—and eliminate everything else.

Hall: "It stops the clock once a day and takes an assessment, offering the kind of in-depth and analytical work that the 24/7 breaking news world on the Web cannot provide. Print is good at the things the Web is not good at—watchdog, explanatory, enterprise, narrative storytelling. The two media complement one another. One is the flowing river, changing constantly; the other is the rock on the shore, fixed and solid."

Mario Garcia (CEO newspaper design firm): "In some communities, the core printed product will not be around in two, five or 10 years. In others, it will publish less often, as [only] Friday and Sunday, for example. The daily ones will be compact formats, some even the A4 format, already popular in many countries in Europe. They will be inspired by magazines and books, and less by traditional daily fare."

Hall: "Editors need a vision of how to differentiate their product from the Web but also make it as exciting and new as digital media. Visuals get you part of the way there. A new approach to writing and storytelling can get you the rest of the way."

Hall: "Change is rapid and continuous. It would be foolish to try to predict even two years out in our business. Liveliness, emotion and depth will be the key attributes in the next few years for print."

Then, for the hell of it, patch that together with the launch of True/Slant, an on-line publication built around a non-staff cadre of "knowledge experts". WSJ's Walt Mossberg offered his take on the basic concept:

True/Slant is run by a former news executive at America Online who worked at a variety of publications, including The Wall Street Journal. It covers a wide range of topics, such as politics, culture, sports, business, health, science and food.

It is launching with 65 journalists, or "knowledge experts," assigned to specific topics. Each of these contributors gets a page to house their journalism and, it is hoped, an active social network of followers who will regularly discuss the articles they read there. Each page also will feature headlines of stories elsewhere on the Web selected by the contributors. These "headline grabs" link back to the originating outside site.

The revenue model is supposed to work like this:

The journalists are paid a small amount, but the plan is to turn them into minipublishers under the True/Slant umbrella. They will be offered a share of the advertising and sponsorship revenues their individual pages generate and, in some cases, equity in True/Slant, which is backed by venture capital.

These contributors are allowed to keep writing elsewhere, either online or in traditional media, and even to promote these outside efforts on True/Slant. But they are expected to post original commentary and analysis to True/Slant. They also are allowed to arrange for their own advertising or sponsorships, in addition to what True/Slant can sell, and even, in some cases, to add other authors to their pages.

In another unusual move, the contributors also are required to actively engage with readers on the site. They must post a minimum number of comments in reader discussions about their articles and curate the comments, giving prominence to the most interesting. They are even expected to comment on each other's posts.

And ..

This required engagement is an attempt to capture some of the excitement of a social network, and it ties in directly with a contributor's success. On the home page, and elsewhere throughout the site, True/Slant promotes not only the most popular contributors, but also the most active ones. High rankings in these categories can lead to higher traffic on each contributor's page, and, indirectly, to higher income.

Readers who are active commenters can also gain prominence on the site, especially if those comments are popular or called out for special attention. A front-page panel will highlight the most active commenters, and the most called-out comments.

I believe the description you're looking for is "glorified free-lance".

But the notions of "livelier", "more emotional" "magazine-style" writing from "experts" on certain topics, plus cultivated interactivity with the public, plus a cut of the (modest) revenue stream as incentive to produce verifiably engaging material sounds considerably more real and practical than dreamily hoping to rescue a 600-limbed dinosaur mired in the tarpits of debt and lifeless prose.

Instead, try imagining an on-line only "paper" with a core of maybe as few as 20 glamour-less beat reporters, working schools, city government, etc. buttressed by this contract crowd of "experts" working essentially on an interactivity-based commission, but maintaining a buzz around the central hive.

 

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By dawn Thursday Jon Stewart's take down of CNBC for its bootlicking, fanzine style of "reporting" (i.e. cheerleading) of international finance in the run up to the meltdown was already the stuff legend, well on its way to pop culture immortality. And deservedly so.

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[UPDATED]:  It just keeps getting worse. Former City Pages owners Tom Bartel and Kris Henning, who now operate the online site Secrets of the City, home of the popular Today's Talk AKA MnSpeak forum, have been forced to stop payments to bloggers, including people such as veteran writer Britt Robson for his tireless Timberwolves/NBA coverage.

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I corrected yesterday's post, where I had KTLK's generic conservative talker Chris Baker physically returning to Houston. In classic mega-media fashion, Baker will instead be providing, uh, content, such as his stunningly credulous interview with Michele Bachmann, to both the Twin Cities and Houston markets (with a combined reachable audience of, um, nine million or so).

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[UPDATED AGAIN] Frequent commenter, Jimmy, digs out this quote from Village Voice Media executive David Schneiderman on maintaining integrity while maximizing the Internet:

Jimmy writes:  "For what it's worth, here's what could be a deliciously ironic quote from Voice CEO David Schneiderman, after he agreed in 2005 to step down to President of the Internet Division (I say could be because I still don't quite get all this alleged Digg skullduggery) when The Voice was swallowed up by New Media to become what many regard as the Clear Channel of so called 'alt weeklies.'":

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Judging by the question I'm being asked most, the number of hours until the Star Tribune declares bankruptcy is of secondary interest to media-watchers.

What people really want to know is whether C. J. will remain as the gossip columnist. One rumor has her already being given assurances that she will. If this proves true while the "newspaper" (quote marks for hyperbole) presents Katherine Kersten and Nick Coleman with the "cub reporter option"--a low-level job so demeaning and saturated with purposeful humiliation they take the buyout and go--the Strib may finally achieve the status the Power Line boys incessantly say it has long been, i.e. "a national laughingstock."

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I had a plan to post a review of the most recent Frontline, "Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story" . . . you know, before it ran this past Tuesday night. As Donald Rumsfeld says, "Stuff happened," and I was left searching for a hook to get it up now. To that end, thank you very much, John Hinderaker, local attorney, once upon a time "Blogger of the Year" (so said Time magazine), co-author of the blog Powerline, an oft-quoted Koran of sorts for serious head-bobbing conservatives and . . . and . . . recipient of the First Annual Golden Wingnut Award, given for the single most jaw-dropping loss of intellectual gravity displayed anywhere on the Internet in the past year (so said Kevin Drum, then of Washington Monthly).

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    One upside to the relentless, Draconian reduction of reporters in mainstream newsrooms and their vigilant focus on crime and he said/she said political coverage is that that daily papers and TV stations have neither the resources or interest to get involved with the truly ludicrous fringes of the Culture Wars. That’s too bad in a way, because there is a laugh in some of this stuff, and little more widely-publicized ridicule of the worst excesses could have a tonic-like effect on our hyper-partisan culture.
    But, hell, I’m happy to handle the crumbs the corporate folks won’t stoop to sweep, (unless the Strib’s Tim O’Brien drops this into his on-line round-up).
    The hyperventilating over Gen. Wesley Clark’s “attack” on John McCain’s “service record”/”patriotism” had barely died down this past week when some of the same suspects – coagulating around the National Review On-Line’s Jonah Goldberg, (an occasional contributor to the Strib’s editorial pages) – started going off on “Wall-E”, the new Pixar movie about love between a couple cute 29th century ‘bots.
   Here, via Talking Points Memo, is a hilarious, “Daily Show”-worthy compendium of FoxNews’ morning ninnies and others blowing gaskets over Clark’s comment. (Do these people ever go home at night and say, “God, I hope my kids didn’t see that show”?)
    I caught “Wall-E” out at Southdale this past Wednesday night. By the “Tomato-Meter” over at RottenTomatoes.com it is the best-reviewed movie of the year. Accordingly, the theater was 90% full. Adults laughed and kids seemed to eat it up. And that’s good sign, because it really is a terrific movie. (I won’t say “terrific little movie”, because the thing cost close to $200 million, and comes via the Disney juggernaut.) The visuals are frequently stunning – without quite the luscious, over-saturated gleam of “Cars” or “Ratatouille”, (different director, different story), and yes, there is a bit of a message. Wall-E, you see, is a garbage compactor dutifully cleaning up the planet after human life has literally trashed the place and cut bait for the stars … and a new market for the omnipotent Buy ‘n Large corporation, (Wal-Mart), through whose ultra-mega big box emporiums all human wants are created and then over-met.
    The lover ‘bots, Wall-E and Eva (a sleek, gleamy-white Mac kind of girl) operate in service to humans, all of whom have been fattened like Slurpee-sucking ticks by Buy ‘n Large and are now floating in a permanent Carnival Cruise-like torpor billions of miles from home. Too obese to even walk they float around on levitating Barca-Loungers with a TV screen hovering inches from their porky faces delivering all the information they need to mintain their lethal levels of consumption.
    (As someone with a dangerous obsession for Costco, I laughed … nervously.)
    So, yeah. A satiric, cautionary message amid the glorious pictures, romance, comedy and sci-fi homages. (A la “2001’s” HAL 9000, Otto the giant cruiser’s on-board computer shouldn’t be trusted, and the soundtrack exults with “Also Sprach Zarathustra” when the porcine cruiser captain finally stands up right and walks.)

    So what happens over in The Chronically Irritable Echo Chamber? With Goldberg as the tent pole, accusations of "fascism" began flowing in.

    Says NRO blogger Shannen Coffin:  "From the first moment of the film, my kids were bombarded with leftist propaganda about the evils of mankind. It's a shame, too, because the robot had promise. The story was just awful, however. Nice to see that Disney and Pixar can make mega-millions off of telling us just how greedy, lazy, and destructive we all are. There's no hope for mankind. Hand over your wallet."

      

    A fawning reader of both Goldberg's latest book, "Liberal fascism" and his blog: "I am about two thirds of the way through Liberal Fascism (brilliant, by the way, and utterly absorbing), and so I find myself in “spot the Fascist” mode in just about everything I do – especially in regards to popular culture and movies. Your dissection of the fascistic elements in “Dead Poet’s Society”, for example, really raised my eyebrows, as I have always really enjoyed the movie and know it quite well, but was not previously equipped to notice those sort of elements. 

      

    "I took my kids to see “Wall-E” over the weekend, and although I really did enjoy the movie, I was at various points struck by what I perceived as strongly fascists elements in the story and the aesthetics. Possibly I am REALLY over-reaching, thanks to the fact that I am still tripping out over your book’s eye-opening thesis, but some elements seemed to fall right into the aesthetic and political traits you cite so often in LF:

     "1) The entire issue of environmental concern and crises mongering, which pervades the movie, although admittedly in a fairly good-natured form that tends to avoid being preachy

      

    "2) The portrayal of the corporate consumer world as bad, with its attendant “system” that lulls the populace into a stupor, and which is then countered by the back-to-the-soil, making-it-real rebellion lead by the Captain after his spiritual awakening learning about the tribal roots of human society.

   

    "3) The use of the color red to mark those who have experienced liberation from the “system” 

   

    "4) The mass rally on the Lido deck near the end of the movie, with its ordered ranks of humans staring up in awe at the Captain as he fights the system, and the green banners flying all around them as they do.   

 

    "5) Eve shaking off her programmed directives and getting in touch with her emotional, passionate inner self when she sets out to save Wall-E.

      

    "There were other things that tingled my “fascist sense”, or whatever, although I can’t immediately recall what they were."

    And Goldberg responding, "I agree with the charges of hypocrisy. I agree that the Malthusian fear mongering was annoying."

    I don't want to make more of this than it is worth -- which isn't much, other than a sad statement on some folks'  tortured sense of victimhood --  but  it  git me going on a  favorite  hot button for discussion, namely, if something like "Wall-E", with what  (to me) seems  a pretty  non-inflammatory tale of robot love amid an, as I say, cautionary message about the effects of gross consumption is both "liberal" and "fascist", where, or what is "conservative art"? Obviously Goldberg's ginned up "liberal fascism" is oxymoronic, a bit like "racist integrationist", or "secular religious fanatic". So by his standard, "conservative art" may be oxymoronic as well.

(And yes, Goldberg's deluded fan is actually so confused he's got Eva the robot's individualistic rebellion confused with fascism.)

    If true art is defined as the combination of skill and imagination that produces an aesthetic advancing, enhancing or illuminating the human condition, where are examples of conservatives of Goldberg's ilk producing anything like that?  You know, like maybe a full-length animated feature snickering at global climate change, mocking equality of the sexes, championing conceal-and-carry laws, or, a la Edina resident Katherine Kersten, turning up their noses at (Edina) EcoMoms doing something to raise environmental consciousness?

     Besides the cheap joke that "conservative art" doesn't go much further than ribbon magnets on SUVs and Lee Greenwood anthems, the fairer answer is that most everything other than what is generally regarded as "art" is anchored (mired) in a fundamentally conservative ethos of revenue before unique expression. The average, formulaic Hollywood movie -- "Get Smart", "Hancock" -- with nothing at all to say, about anything, and up on a screen for no other reason than to provide enough escapism to make a buck, is status quo "art", (which is also probably oxymoromic).

    Goldberg and his crowd take their shots at giant Disney, as though the Disney corporation, (as Buy 'n Large as you get), is getting fascist and subversive with "Wall-E's" dystopian setting and bloated humans. (A cameo by Fred Willard as the President/CEO of Buy 'n Large urging the fatsos on the space cruiser to "Stay the course" really gets 'em going.)

    I think it was Independence Day that set me off on this one.