Kick a Man When He’s Down (For the Count)

A Tale of Two Obits: The Associated Press, announcing the death of Count Gottfried von Bismarck, led its story with news that “the troubled scion of one of Germany’s most famous families has died.” The United Kingdom’s Telegraph got a bit more descriptive. Its lede: “Count Gottfried von Bismarck, who was found dead on Monday aged 44, was a louche German aristocrat with a multi-faceted history as a pleasure-seeking heroin addict, hell-raising alcoholic, flamboyant waster and a reckless and extravagant host of homosexual orgies.”

Josh Wolf runs for SF mayor: Minneapolis videoblogging pioneer Chuck Olsen — who made the film Blogumentary and runs the daily vlog Minnesota Stories — broke the news that controversial  anarchist videographer Josh Wolf will run for mayor of San Francisco. After Olsen posted his video, Wolf announced his candidacy.

WCAL, SOL? Don’t count on a reversal of St. Olaf College’s sale of WCAL to Minnesota Public Radio, say experts quoted in a Star Tribune story on the case. The Minnesota attorney general’s office filed a memo agreeing with alumni and community members who opposed the 2004 sale of the station to Minnesota Public Radio that the school’s assets, including WCAL, are a community trust. But the logic of groups like SaveWCAL — that a reversal of the sale might be in the offing — doesn’t necessarily follow. At issue is how St. Olaf can spend funds earned in the deal, not terms of the deal itself, which earned MPR a slot on the dial for The Current. “The sale and the sale proceeds aren’t at issue right now,” said Deputy Attorney General Ann Kinsella. “We’re not going to be able to put the genie back in the bottle. The sale was three years ago.” Hamline professor David Schultz, writes the Strib, agrees the sale likely won’t be nullified.

New TC art paper: The Twin Cities has a new arts journal. Dubbed ARP! (that’s Art Review & Preview), the quarterly publication is the brainchild of Minnesota natives Ariel Pate and Tiffany Hockin, both recent graduates of the Kansas City Art Institute. According to Hockin, the pair saw and wanted to fill “a critical gap in the Twin Cities Visual Arts community.” The first issue is out — and the publishers are looking for contributors to the next one, which will offer a history of Twin Cities art.