When did Paul become a media critic? Wasn't he fired from every paper in town?

I caught that, too.  Plus, his 'joke' at the end of the column:   Passi and Stahl should make any official, or anyone else engaged in questionable or foolish behavior, consider the possibility of seeing it on the front page.

"Some people — usually the subjects of those [investigative] stories — don't like them. Most everyone else does. Everybody remembers them.

Which, with all due respect, you can't say for "spry pelts"."

What?  It doesn't even make sense to me, except it's a pointless dig.  I mean that, pointless, if he wants to raise a beef with Reyelts then do it, but say something.  Otherwise I agree with Paul, why not talk up your own team without ripping on the TV?

This may be a threadjack, but I like the new/old look of the Budgeteer, looks much more like the paper I started delivering when I was 8 years old.  Call me nostalgic, but I like my newspaper to look like a paper, not a weak copy of some other publication.  Also, I'm biased but I think that Matt Perrine's art and community coverage might just make that a must-read paper again, too.  I loved the recent stories and analysis of  the downtown economy.

I agree with you totally, Paul, that whole thing about "spry pelts" was weird. and I hope assigning Brandon Stahl to do  investigative journalism isn't going to make the paper even more of a tabloid than it's become in recent years.

Sorry, Sam, I totally disagree with you. The DNT comments section was a total embarrassment, b/c a few wingnuts would hijack just about every thread and spew hate and nonsense. The reason PDD is a success is that there's some accountability, even though people can post anonymously if they wish. And if someone spews hate and nonsense here on PDD, chances are they'll get called out on it. If someone wants to provide information to DNT reporters anonymously, they can just shoot them an email -- anonymously.

The commentaries on PDD are more well informed and reasoned than the diatribes posted on the DNT website. Case in point was the latest exchange about the Israeli army response to the Gaza relief effort.

I agree with Paul on this.  The tone of the column was bizarre, and parts of it made no sense at all.  "No one can say that about 'spry pelts'? WTF?"

To each their own on that column, but isn't Northland's News Center dishing out pretty much the same thing - albeit less personal - with every one of their many promos (of which Barbara Reyelts, as part of management, no doubt plays a role in approving).

There's at least one ad in their rotation specifically touting their superiority over newspapers. And their incessant "more news" slogans tout - some more specific than others, all falsely - that they have "more news," while the DNT (and every other outlet in town) is lagging behind.

Redressing AP articles is a difficult task, apparently.

From the column in question:

"If you know somebody who's ripping people off or doing something wrong in other ways, better tell them to watch out."

Here's an idea: I know from a very solid source that a local daily paper in Duluth, MN, was set to do a story on a Duluth author with a nationally published first novel (published by a big time NYC publisher) that has received an abundance of critical praise. The DNT did an interview and a photo shoot with the author, but the article never appeared. Why? Because the editor realized the author was also an editor of a local monthly magazine, so he put the kibosh on the piece because he didn't want to advertise a competitor. Isn't that censorship guided by business, not news validity? Not a very ethical decision for a news source. I'd love to see an investigative report on that story! What's next: "You buy an ad, see, and then we do this nice story about your company/product/event...."

Quite a shift in the DNT policy: In 2005, when X-Comm published Denny Anderson's "Goodnight, Everybody....and be Kind"--a memoir by the anchor of a competing news source--the DNT gave Denny and the book a front page, above-the-fold article that celebrated his 40 years as "The Voice of the Northland" (the DNT's headline that day). See, even when it struggled financially, the DNT used to be a class act (and they covered local news no matter who made it). Now, well, not so much. I wonder if it has anything to do with editorial leadership? I wonder how this sits with the hard working folks in the news room trenches?

 "Spry pelts"? Are you kidding me? Why take some cheap shot at the competition?  What did that do to help the paper gain readers and advertisers? Better to ignore the competition rather than to point it out. He took what should have been a selling feature for the paper (finally, someone assigned to investigate stories, what a novel idea for a newspaper!) and instead made the DNT look petty and small.

I was surprised by this column, too. It was really odd. I don't think it's professional to go after a competitor like that. The

"Which, with all due respect, you can't say for "spry pelts"."

line at the end was weird, esp. after calling her 'spry pelts' the whole time.

I was in Best Buy the other day and I heard someone say to another "Dude, Robin Washington did this video for the News Tribune TV thing, and it's so bizarre! It's like he was ". I went home and watched the segment and it's true - he was pretty weird on video. Has Washington lost his mind?

Trying to say that 'city worker earned $123k' article was good journalism is pretty off the mark, too. Actually, that was terrible journalism.  The worker is only getting paid that much because the city stacks him with overtime instead of just getting a second employee, but the DNT didn't seem to realize or want to make note of that part. Plus, it's personally embarrassing to a private citizen who is not a politician or anything. Pretty bad example.

What a clunky and kind of demeaning way to promote itself and its staff. It takes a positive development and needlessly shackles it to negative connotations - it does seem really out of context.

Also, "spry pelts" is extremely lame.  If you're going to call somebody out, just call somebody out, don't try to be cutesy about it.

Re: Jenny's comment about the city overtime story

Jenny, did you just read the headline, or did you actually read the story? The story clearly outlined why the worker was earning that much money, and went into great detail about the city/union/OT rules and policies that led to the situation, as well as the sorry state of city infrastructure that necessitates so much work. They included comments from the worker in question, the union, city officials and other city employees. They compared Duluth's OT costs to other cities. They cast light on policies and procedures that most Duluth residents probably had never heard of. What more were you looking for?

In case anyone wants to judge for themselves, here's a back-door link to that city story:

This city worker's salary: $123,982.56: And he's just one of several city employees who worked hundreds of hours of overtime. The bill for taxpayers? $2.7 million.

I subscribe to the DNT and I think somebody there, whose name rhymes with "Bobbin Posh Wing Done," with all due respect of course,  thinks he is much funnier (and smarter) than he actually is.

The smug look on his face in his head shot photo makes it all the more unpalatable.

The Barbara Reyelts comment simply cements it as proof in my mind.

Yes, that's how it should be. The content attracts the readers, and the readers attract the advertisers.  

It would be nice if editors didn't make content decisions based on advertisers, and advertisers didn't make ad buying decisions based on content. I'm not that optimistic.  

The intermediary readers help us to ignore the glaring conflict of interest built right into the business model.

34 comments, most complaining about Robin's quote, but nobody denying that what he said about Reyelts is right.

Because it was a cheap shot, Danny, and actually kind of bizarre.  Oh and not funny.  

But in my hamfisted way I did sort of address what you are saying by saying he should have just written about criticism of "Spry pelts" if he had something to say otherwise, just leave it alone.

Underlying sexism too obvs.

"New funding model for journalism: try doing it for a change."
— Julian Paul Assange, WikiLeaks founder [Twitter / web]

How about it wasn't ageism, sexism, frighteningly-skinnyism, or whatever?  How about it was simply one journalist giving his opinion on another journalist?

I think Mevdev, we do have an inherent (or at least constitutional) right to quality non-biased journalism as it is prerequisite for true democracy.  We can hardly self-govern effectively without the free flow of information.

Paul's point, I believe, was that to encourage thinking about how to increase revenue by appealing to advertisers with content would directly compromise that unbiased flow of information.  I took it a little further in my comment by questioning whether the advertisement funded business model really is capable of consistently producing information that is beneficial to the community and democracy but possibly detrimental to a major advertiser.

This view is based on your assertion (which I agree with) that the "DNT is a business and must make decisions based on money coming in." With that reality in mind, we need to do our best to bridge the gap between the way things are and the way they ought to be. In the absence of a credible funding alternative (thanks for the link Adam), the best bet is to maintain a thick wall between the business side and the journalism side of a newspaper.

Now please back to Bobbin Posh Wing Done.

So journalists have to be journalists at all times and never, ever give their opinions on other journalists?

Danny, not sure why this is so difficult for you to understand.

Washington's column last Sunday wasn't a piece of journalism. It was a sales piece (disguised within his column, which we normally expect to be opinion) about the DNT now having investigative reporters on staff and other staffing changes. If it were an opinion piece about the quality of investigative journalism in the Duluth media, then he would have had the right to actually say something critical about Barbara Reyelts. (And if he were honest he would have had to say something even more critical about the DNT.)

But it was not really an opinion as much as it was a thinly-veiled sales piece designed to increase readership and advertisers for the DNT, and he used it to take a cheap shot at a competitor. And no matter your opinion of Reyelt's journalism, age, gender, or physical appearance, it was extremely inappropriate, unnecessary, sophomoric, and distracted from the goal of the piece, essentially undermining the entire effort and making the whole DNT look small and petty

Come to think of it, Washington's piece was a lot like many of your posts: too often inappropriate, unnecessary, sophomoric, and a distraction from the real topic at hand that essentially undermines a lively discussion. Oh, and don't let me forget thinking oneself clever for coming up with names like "Skelator" or "Spry Pelts."

Look.  I totally get it.  I totally understand WHY everyone is in such a tizzy about what he did here (although some of the ageism and sexism allegations are absolutely laughable).  I just didn't find it particularly offensive...partly since I agree with what he said (and nobody else seems to disagree since nobody is disputing his opinion).  It's merely a matter of me being able to handle this style of writing a column and some people not being able to.  But again, I'm sort of an "all bets are off" guy when it comes to the opinions being shared.  If you're not, then so be it.

Also, to Claire: He wasn't making fun of her name.  He was referencing her without saying her name by (sloppily) rhyming it.  That practice is decidedly NOT making fun of her name.  Weird that you would have gotten that out of it. 

Here we go again...

Shut Up, Danny...if that is indeed your real name: I'm still waiting to hear what stories Babs HAS indeed broken in the last decade or two.  You know, like Robin said.

So about this investigative journalism business. 

What constitutes investigative journalism?  Could someone who has more education that I regarding these matters give me a definition? 

And what then, is the line between investigative journalism and tabloid crap?  What constitutes a lead versus a rumor?  And if you hear a rumor, do you follow it?  And when does it because a grown up version of high school shenanigans? 

Why, MK?  Why are you digging up this old thread?  Because the phone call I got for a potential investigative journalism piece was so friggin' ridiculous, that I'm ready to cancel my subscription.  Anybody with some mildly honed observation skills of human nature would quickly put together that the lead was no lead at all.