Hammer falling at the Strib

Everyone in the Twin Cities knows that the Minneapolis Star-Tribune has hit some very hard times, and that started when the economy still boomed.  Two years ago, the paper sold for half of its sale value from just a few years before.  Avista Capital Partners has already had run-ins with its creditors even at that price, and now the cuts have begun in earnest, according to the MinnPost (via Mitch Berg):

Star Tribune management is blowing up their columnist roster.

According to a buyout memo released this afternoon and newsroom sources, Nick Coleman and Katherine Kersten will lose their columns, though they may be able to remain at the paper as reporters.

To put it mildly, that would be a stretch for Kersten, who has never held such a journalism job. Expect a gigantic eruption from the right wing.

The paper’s other metro columnists — Lileks? CJ? — may not be breathing easy, either. Management’s buyout memo asked for “up to three” metro columnists and “up to one” editorial cartoonist, which seems a classification limited to Steve Sack.

Rumors had the Strib about to close their doors last spring, and that was when credit still could be found.  Now, with the collapse of the credit markets and an inevitable decline in advertising revenue, the Strib and Avista have to find ways to stop the bleeding.  It looks like the Strib sees opinion journalism as the least essential part of their program and have begun to cut in that area.

Nick Coleman is no great loss.  The Strib should have fired him years ago, and missed their best chance when he wrote a column accusing David Strom, the president of the Taxpayers League of Minnesota, of killing the thirteen people who died in the St. Anthony Bridge collapse within hours of the tragedy for championing lower taxes.  Instead of waiting a whole day to get more of the story (when MnDOT acknowledged they had the money to build a new bridge if they wanted), or waiting until the NTSB could perform an investigation (which showed that the collapse came from a significant design defect and not poor maintenance), Coleman waited six whole hours to climb on his hobby horse against people who want to keep taxes low, and rode over the bodies of the dead to do it.

Unfortunately, rather than just fire Coleman for incompetence, they’re laying him off or demoting him to the news section.  That means they have to show some balance (for once) and axe their lone conservative voice at the paper.  Katherine Kersten has done a remarkable job at the Strib as a rare voice for conservatism in the paper, but she’s also the last one in, and most companies would make her the first one out regardless of point of view. I’ll miss her, and like David Brauer, I also doubt that she’ll remain as a reporter.  Hopefully she finds another platform soon.

The sacking of Sack comes as a mild surprise.  Steve Sack has never been one of my favorites as an editorial cartoonist, but having an in-house cartoonist gave the Strib a certain elevation among dailies.  Now they’ll presumably just buy off of the wires for their editorial cartoon each day, which will save Avista some money but will relegate the Strib to an also-ran among newspapers.

Will Lileks and “CJ” also get the axe?  I’d be surprised if either do.  Both of them operate in more of an entertainment mode at the Strib, something it desperately needs.  Without Lileks’ wit and CJ’s gossip, the only reason to buy the paper would be coupons and comic strips — and I’ll bet the latter will start getting cut back as well.

In the end, though, this may just wind up being the media version of rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.  That would be too bad, as no one really wants the Strib out of business.  We need two dailies in this market, but we need them both to do better.  Changing the editorial board would have been a better call by Avista, which they declined to do even while getting Jim Boyd out in a buyout.  Maybe that’s where the latest round of cuts should have focused.