The small question of the Big Question?
June 5th, 2007 – 8:19 AM by Eric Black
Good Tuesday morning Dear Friends of the Big Q,
I apologize for the delay in updating you on the future of the Big Question and the humble ink-stained wretch who has blogged his brains out on it since 2005. I wanted to respect the right of my long-time employer, the Star Tribune, and of my new employer, the Center for Independent Media, to announce the change in their own way.
As has been reported elsewhere, I am leaving the Star Tribune, effective June 15 and will shortly assume new duties with my own blog (name and url To Be Determined), with the Minnesota Monitor, and with other news sites associated with the Center for Independent Media.
I have accepted a buyout offered by the Strib. I have not been forced out. In fact, the Strib management wanted me to stay and keep blogging, despite the aforementioned problem of the brains being blogged out. But, within the exigencies of the current downsizing, they made it better worth my while to go (and keep blogging).
I have worked for the Minneapolis Tribune/Minneapolis Star and Tribune/Star Tribune (newspaper of the Twin cities) since 1977. Perhaps 30 years is long enough for any one gig. I am proud of some of the nine gazillion words I have typed during those years and grateful to those who have perused those words and occasionally felt informed by them. Thanks for the gift of your time, your attention and –especially since I started blogging — your participation in the discussion of many questions, big and small.
The Strib will continue to publish, online and on paper. I wish my many esteemed colleagues well as they face the challenging future of newspapering. Special thanks to esteemed colleague D.J. Tice, who joined me recently as co-Big Questioner. I regret to inform those who speculated otherwise that Tice’s recent absence from the blog had everything to do with being swamped by his day job, which included overseeing the coverage of the legislative session, and nothing to do with anything else.
Managing Editor Scott Gillespie told me Monday that the management expects to continue the Big Question, but is still sorting through how to do that without yr. obdt. ink-stained.
I am excited about my new venture. The Center for Independent Media is a Wasington-based non-profit that operates the MNMON, the Colorado Confidential and the new Iowa Independent. CIM plans to add more state-based sites and is develoing other ideas for testing the frontiers of online news and analysis. It would be poor form to abuse the tolerance of my long-time employer with any more gush about my plans…
Except for this: I’m on the Strib payroll for two more weeks, and will try, between Sisyphean hours of desk-cleaning, to find something blogworthy to post here. So, as you see, all this sentimental eyewash is quite premature.
42 Responses to "The small question of the Big Question?"
Well, I see you are going to work for George Soros.
Good Luck!
Thanks for the update EB and good luck with your new adventures in bloggerly goodness.
As for the BQ, after reading the related article at MN Monitor it doesn’t sound promising to me if they keep this blog as an add-on to someone else. Tice sounds like he isn’t going to have any time at all and with the cutbacks who else really will? Besides, anytime new management says they expect to continue things it usually means they won’t.
Thanks for the update. Good luck in the new venture.
Best of luck in your new venture
EB:
While I disagree with your politics, you have an amazing talent for writing as well a civil demeanor.
I wish you well in your future endeavors.
Good luck EB – we’ll see you over at your new site, to be sure.
Well, at least you can finally be out in the open with politics when you write.
hope all the spleens have been vented above. have appreciated your writing all these years, and good luck as you move onward
hope all the spleens have been vented above. have appreciated your writing all these years, and good luck as you move onward
Mr. Black:
I will never forgive you for not printing that stuff I sent you on Bachmann prior to her to 2006 election to Congress. (You know, that document she wrote where she accused Bush and the GOP Congress of complicity in a plan to end free market capitalism and impose one world government and a Soviet style economy on the US.)
If that had made its way into the local and national press, that nut might not have made it into Congress.
But you weren’t the only member of the mainstream media who refused to run coverage on that particular Bachmann statement. The local professional media in general behaved like curs, and as a result that nut is now representing me and tens of thousands of other Minnesotans in Congress.
But Black–I have weighed you in the balance, and though you have been found wanting, I am willing to put my thumb on the scales for you to even things out. Because you write the best damn news commentary blog by a media professional in Minneapolis. Ever since you dropped the “Chicken Soup For the Soul” type pieces from this blog–eg, the “what I learned about civility in discourse from walking my dog in the park” stuff–the quality here has zoomed up. And it wasn’t bad before. Always lots of solid information here.
You don’t write the best blog, period–the constraints placed on your news coverage by your corporate masters preclude that–but surely the best by a local reporter.
So good luck with your new venture as you make your way out of the office with your great big wheelbarrow full of money from the Strib buyout. I will surely check you out when you go to work for “Citizen Soros.”
But I am also going to stay here and comment at the Big Q, for two reasons: 1) the Star Tribune “brand”, in and of itself, still has value as a forum; 2) I am curious to see what second-rate, low-rent fool they replace you with as moderator. Another “intern” to replace an experienced professional, a la the Strib’s late, lamented Washington D.C. bureau?
Anyway–even though I know you’ll still be around a couple of weeks–my very best to you and yours and good luck in your new endeavour.
You’re right Bill- there has been a real shortage of discussions about Bachmann or even Coleman. I gave information to the strib about Klobuchar too, and they did not find the need to print it either.
“You’re right Bill- there has been a real shortage of discussions about Bachmann or even Coleman.”
Well, that wasn’t what I said, OT, but don’t let that stop you. The thing I gave Black, and other local newspaper/broadcast media prior to the election, was thing that “BACHMANN ACTUALLY WROTE”–proof of her craziness, written by her, herself. See why it’s wrong for the media not to alert the public to that, prior to a Congressional election?
I wasn’t asking the Strib or MPR to do a hatchet job on Bachmann, I was just asking them to print what *Bachmann* wrote, so that people would know what they were voting for or against. Instead, they killed it, spiked it, wouldn’t ask her so much as a question about it, on the record. You can still read the document by the way; it’s online.
What did you have on Klobuchar, that they refused to print?
My point was that EB has had more than any blogs share of anti bachmann and coleman threads. I didnt mean you agreed.
As far as Klobuchar- I can only say it involved her interoffice politics and settling of cases, the hypocrisy of her commercials, etc. I won’t go into any detail because some of it is not really meant for public eyes.
“I won’t go into any detail because some of it is not really meant for public eyes.”
Perhaps that is why they didn’t report it then.
The theory is that “if you give the press something really good/juicy about a politician, they will print it.”
The sources don’t even have to be named to go to print or broadcast (though the source was named, in the Bachmann story I was pitching; the source was Bachmann herself.) The pro media can print the item about the politician without disclosing the source, that’s how a lot of the big stories about politics get started. They just have a professional duty (not even a legal one) to find that the source is credible/trustworthy, before they report the story as news.
But, as I found out, just because you have the solid fact and the named source for an interesting and relevant story–that doesn’t mean the local professional media are going to print it.
I’ll bet they have about two hundred hidden agendas that factor into whether they’re going to run a story or not–no matter how interesting the story is, no matter how relevant that story is to the public interest. Agendas like “don’t alienate the advertisers”, “my career will be hurt if I run that”, “don’t alienate this part of the subscriber base”, “the editors would like to see this candidate win,”–all hidden agendas; I don’t pretend to know or understand the reasons why a paper kills a perfectly good story that would give the voters important, verified information.
As most of the people who read this blog know–the pro media’s control of the public dialogue is limited to “what they cover.” A big part of how they control public debate is “deciding not to cover” certain stories.
That’s the great thing about the Internet–less middle men in charge, less “power of hidden agenda” to kill good stories. And that’s the rotten thing about the Internet: no gatekeepers, to keep the “cr@p accusations” out of the public discourse.
Thanks for 30 years of excellent reporting, and a couple of years of fun commenting on the blog.
See you at your new site.
Good luck, Eric, I hope to run across your work again in the future.
EB, losing you in the buyout is a tremendous loss for the Star Tribune and a majority of readers of the newspaper and the Big Question. Though I’m saddened that you’re leaving, I can understand why you’d want to leave now on a good note and begin a new adventure. I wish you the best and I hope to run into again during future events.
Good luck Eric. Thanks for the forum these last couple of years.
Hope you have at least as much freedom over at the MNMON as you had here.
Kinda curious about being unable to find any web reference/site for the Center for Independent Media though.
EB,
You are an honest, but none the less liberally tainted reporter. We have had our discussions – even B4 Big Q – you have always been prompt in your response and courteous to a fault.
BTW, previous name (10SEgene) would not work. Per your long ago query the big C is in temporary remission.
This neocon will miss you – at least til you publish the new URL. As an aside I find virtually all the responses to this blog to be obnoxiously predictable. There are very few new ideas “exchanged”.
Good Luck…G
BP – Funny how you call Bachman crazy – this from a man who appears to be obsessed with her. God Bless you Michele. Our government is a better place with you representing the 6th. There will always be Christian haters, right BP?
The small question of the Big Question? Will the Big Q end with your departure? Will you continue the Big Q on your own blog? Don’t forget to leave us with your new name and URL.
PlainGene, I am glad that your big C is in remission. But you wrote:
“As an aside I find virtually all the responses to this blog to be obnoxiously predictable.”
Well, that’s partially your fault, isn’t it, Gene? If you’ve got something totally mind-blowing to say, why don’t you write in and say it? Why don’t write in right now with one your own “totally unpredictable insights.” For example, you could write something incredibly insightful and subtle about the Paulose affair, some astonishing new opinion that no one could possibly predict. Or, can stop by to take a cheap shot at the people who do bother to venture an opinion here. Take your pick!
Oh, wait: I see you also wrote that you were a neo-con. NOW I understand why you chose to keep quiet.
Bsimon, by “not for public viewing”, I mean there is always payback for goverment whistleblowers whether they say there is or not. I happen to enjoy my security clearance along with my promotional status, so giving the info to a news source and giving it to blog writers is an entirely different matter.
I look forward to more liberal bias with the new blog.
I second Bill P. in hoping you got a wheel barrow load of money from the current owners, no make that a truck load. If you got any of your take in stock, dump it and run. They’re going to have a paper that does lots of arts stuff, but they’ve canned the arts writers; they’re going to do long, thoughtful, expensive pieces, but they bought out the ink stained wretch who wrote them.
What’s going to do in the strib is not conservative owners forcing the paper to print the likes of Jonah Goldberg (see Jim Ryan’s interview with your new employer), but conservative business practices that insist on milking the cow they are starving.
Good luck, Eric, I’ll be sure to book mark the Monitor.
I think that with this exodus of reporters, the Star & Tribune is gutted. It may take awhile to realize the actual death. The fatal disease started when the paper started omitting many stories and ensuring a slant to the news chosen.
I appreciate all the times that Eric Black still managed to do a good job of reporting! Thanks! I am looking forward to your work unfettered.
Thank you for your good work and your civility, Eric. And best of luck with your new venture. I’ve appreciated the opportunity to participate in this forum.
Best, Mts
Nah. The fatal disease started when the Vikings realized they needed the land the Strib sits on in order to build a football stadium at the metrodome site.
les writes
“Kinda curious about being unable to find any web reference/site for the Center for Independent Media though.”
here you go:
http://newjournalist.org/
Thanks Bsimon.
At first glance, it doesn’t look like a Soros propaganda organization.
There’s something truly vile about wrapping a politician up in her religion and then accusing her critics of being anti-Christian.
I can only conclude that Cash N. Carey is a female commenter who hates Prendergast for being male, and not, as I had always suspected, a semi-pseudonym for Ron Carey.
Eric, one thing you’ll like about your new gig is that their comments stay on topic with greater frequency than they do here. I don’t know what it is about this blog, but here the comments NEVER stay on topic, and given the effort you put into your writing, that’s a shame.
Good luck with the new gig.
Bill Pendergast…
You are the poster child for mean and obnoxious posts. Is there a single human being in the world you meet with kindness?
How sad – you are WAY not worth my time – ever!
Mark- that is probably because you will only get likeminded liberal brainwashed people going to that site so they are always on the same topic. – good luck- i won’t be visitting that site, i am sure that will make dora very happy.
I hope they do find someone else to do the Big Question. It really grew over time. I look forward to reading your new blog.
Since Eric has been covering Michele Bachmann for the Strib, I have been giving him background information about her – verifiable, good, solid information. He’s taken some of it and put it into stories, and with other information he hasn’t. He got lots of traffic from the Bachmannistan story, but then took lots of grief from Bachmann’s deranged followers – including getting attacked for two hours on Jason Lewis’s show. I do think he was fair in fact checking the disgusting ads coming from both campaigns, and I much appreciated him getting Patty Wetterling on the record about the inconsistancy of her position on the Federal Marriage Amendment.
The black helicopters are circling for Andy Aplikowski of Residual Forces (and Bachmann v Wetterling), Mitch Berg of Whine in the Dark and the Learned Foot.
http://www.residualforces.com/2007/06/06/in-case-you-missed-it-stribs-poli-blogger-goes-to-the-libs/
Good luck with your future endeavors, Eric.
PlainGene–
Again, you’re not being very fair, are you?
You wrote in to wish Mr. Black well, despite your differences with him–but you couldn’t resist taking the cheapest of cheap shots at ALL the people who do write in to this blog. You wrote:
“As an aside I find virtually all the responses to this blog to be obnoxiously predictable. There are very few new ideas “exchangedâ€Â.
Not only is that not true, it’s the cheapest of cheap shots. Instead of contributing something of substance, you tell people here that that the opinions they do offer are “obnoxiously predictable.” People here write from their political convictions (right, left, whatever.) People with strong political convictions are going to say things that are predictible; you can “predict” that a civil rights activist is going to react to clampdown on civil rights by criticizing it; you can predict that a Bush fan is going to write in to defend Bush when he’s criticized after his latest disaster. Does that mean that the opinion and information they offer is valueless or “obnoxious?”
And when I challenge you to produce something original and unpredictable to show us how you think it *should* be done–you lash out at me, instead.
It’s sort of a “put up or shut up” situation you put yourself in, criticizing people on a political blog for a lack of originality when you won’t demonstrate your own. That’s kind of “mean and obnoxious”, isn’t it?
I think you owe people here an apology. Not me; all the other people you wrote in to insult.
Bill- he is somewhat telling the truth. I can usually tell exactly what michael, dora or parthian will say before i read it, i could probably write their posts for them.
Yeah, but come on, people can often predict what you or I are going to respond, too–it’s called having a point of view, convictions about politics or an issue. What Bush or Cindy Sheehan would say about the war is often “obnoxiously predictable,” but that’s no criticism of the substance of what is said.
I may be overreacting here to this guy’s parenthetical insult. But cheap shots bug me, especially when I see people bothering to contribute here and trying to back up their opinion with information/links to some authority. That’s a lot more than the usual bar room shouting match about politics you get on the Internet. Even on a bad day here, a person can learn why the people who disagree him with think as they do.
“Even on a bad day here, a person can learn why the people who disagree him with think as they do.”
You’re obviously speaking for yourself here, Bill. Fact is, most people here don’t have any interest in trying to learn why others feel/think they way they do about issues. That is one of the things that separate you from many other posters. I agree with the original comment that the vast majority of dialougue on this blog is nothing remotely resembling an “exchange” of ideas. In fact, it more closely resembles the exact opposite……a laundry list of people trying to cram their ideas down the throats of others by speaking instead of listening.
I’m not claiming to be any different myself. I’m not even saying there is anything wrong about it. Let’s just not pretend that this is something that it is clearly not.
Jay:
No! Let’s keep pretending. I don’t write in here expecting to see “on the road to Damascus” type conversions, and I don’t expect to undergo any. But if there’s facts that make me modify my point of view (like your little presentation on the current state of Iraq’s oil reserves, and explanation of the price hikes in gas)–that’s worth reading.
Another reason that I read people who disagree with me is that it’s important for me to understand what the opposition’s arguments are, this week–what’s the “new information,” if any, they’re relying on. That’s the same reason I listen to conservative talk radio, neocon arguments, evangelical public affairs programming–these guys vote, they put Bush and the Republican Congress in–it does no good to pretend that they don’t exist, even if I firmly believe that their perspective is wrong, reiterations of talking points.
The talking points drive the right’s politics, these days. Too bad, but there we are.
I’m not trying to pretend that the purpose of a political debate is for people to exchange ideas. We can try to exchange ideas all we want, we can’t make people accept the ideas we want them to accept. People have core convictions, different ideas of what government is for.
That doesn’t mean the debate has no value, and it doesn’t mean that people never change their minds about anything, either. Look at the difference in Bush’s approval ratings since 2000, if you don’t believe me. New information can change *some* minds, and that’s a very important fact of politics.
“New information can change *some* minds, and that’s a very important fact of politics.”
And that’s why, as Justin pointed out, that I post from a specific point of view and back it up with links. I want that point of view to be available to those who may read here but never post. I don’t expect to change the views of those posters here who disagree with me but it may be information that the readers here haven’t seen and it may, if not change their mind, cause them to go ‘hmmmmmm’.
Dear Blacko,
It must be interesting to contemplate the differences in journalism from the perspective of an injured stringer in at a small Ohio college, a junior reporter in Pine Bluff, a rising star in Little Rock and then a major player at the Star Tribune; first in print and then in the era of electronic communication.
Might your readers be interested in sage reflections on how the technology and culture of the media has changed in the last 30 years. It’s not exactly the perspective since the town crier of Ethelred the Unready, but sill an worthy period to ponder.
Good luck with your new gig.
John
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