The Vita.mn Cover That Keeps Giving

Lowest com.mn denominator? The Vita.mn cover story that got folks humping mad last week because of its illustration of mating ladybugs apparently drew ire at the Star Tribune from readers who stumbled upon a link on the paper’s home page. Alexis McKinnis’ “Sex al fresco,” about outdoor sex, outraged some readers, including a former communications guy for Arne Carlson, and prompted Strib readers representative Kate Parry to ask, “Does it really take a steady stream of crude sexual double-entendre to get young readers to pick up Vita.mn?”

Taylor Carik, of Flak and Mediation, had a question of his own, “If the last remaining members of the STrib’s newsroom were worried about the integrity of their new cool stepchild, then a vita.mn editor would’ve asked Alexis the same questions Parry so indignantly poses before the piece ran and before it was linked to the STrib homepage.”

In her weekend column, Parry called for a “reality check” on McKinnis; she found it hard to believe that folks in the land of ticks and mosquitos engage in outdoor carnality. That notion drew this reply from McKinnis: “Even my 57-year-old mother asked me if Kate lived under a Lutheran rock; does she really believe such recreation has never existed in the lives of healthy adults?”

More Inside“Quiet crisis” in arts criticism: As an aspiring actor en route from Burlington, Vermont, to New York, Michael Kennedy somehow ended up in Minneapolis. Enchanted by the many arts venues and cultural critics, he stuck around, eventually becoming a teacher at Southwest High School. Today, the city is in “a quiet artistic crisis,” he writes in a Star Tribune guest column: “[T]he critics are fading away because of corporate decisions in the newsrooms, and along with those critics go the arts. If I were to consider moving to the Twin Cities today, I think I would find my way back to New York City rather than stay.”

City Pages wins Altweekly awards: City Pages tied for first in the American Association of Alternative Weeklies annual awards in the cover-design category, for artwork by Nick Vlcek. Writer Dara Moskowitz picked up a third for food criticism, and the paper’s website won a third-place prize for papers with a circulation of more than 60,000. On the judging panel were Minneapolis’ David Schimke, editor of Utne Reader; Utne art director Stephanie Glaros; Flak magazine’s James Norton; Cory Powell, an assistant managing editor for design at the Strib; and New York Times columnist and former Twin Cities Reader editor David Carr.

Strib.com falls from top 30 in May: The Star Tribune’s website apparently fell off the top 30 list of newspaper sites in May. The paper ranked 26th of 30 in April in terms of traffic, but the new Nielsen/NetRatings numbers don’t include the Strib.