Polarity and the Press: A new Pew study finds that people who use the internet as their sole news source are both highly critical of the mainstream media and highly educated. More Democrats than Republicans say they favor news in all media, and people who get their news mainly from Fox have harsher opinions of the media: 63 percent of Fox viewers say mainstream news reports are often inaccurate; 54 percent say the press is “too critical of America”; and 49 percent think the press has been unfair to George W. Bush.

Eric Black ponders the numbers, looking at long-term trends and the effect of “Limbaughism” in the mid-1990s. But it’s the widening polarity of politics that has him concerned. “I’ve believed that the so-called polarization of U.S. politics was a bit overstated, because most people aren’t political enough to be polarized. But Pew’s section on the growing partisan divide has me wondering,” he writes. “I do worry though that the blogosphere makes it ever-easier for citizens to spend their reading time having their preconceptions constantly reinforced.”

Brodkorb’s “inner psychic”: In a recent Bloghouse column, the Star Tribune’s Tim O’Brien gives a rundown of bloggers’ takes on the politics of the 35W collapse. Just after Minnesota Democrats Exposed blogger Michael Brodkorb fisked (or was it “cluster-fisked“?) the St. Cloud Times’ Larry Schumacher, he gets similar treatment from O’Brien: “Brodkorb even channeled his inner psychic to read the mind of Rep. Melissa Hortman,” he writes. “Hortman told the Denver Post that ‘you wonder if this bridge was built to withstand the massive heat we have had this summer.’ In Brodkorb’s partisan translator, that meant she was claiming that global warming brought down the bridge. There’s blogging, and there’s fiction writing — you be the judge.” (Brodkorb’s rebuttal here.)

more insideStrib CFO on “proprietary” PiPress spreadsheets: The Star Tribune’s recently departed CFO Mike Riggs is highlighted in Editor & Publisher’s latest round of excerpts from the Par Ridder trial early this summer. Riggs, who was named as a defendant in the trial, testified that Ridder gave him spreadsheets filled with proprietary information from the Pioneer Press. E&P found it interesting that Riggs didn’t indicate any of the data would be used to get an unfair advantage over the competition, but he reiterated that Ridder told him to make sure information on and about the PiPress spreadsheets didn’t “get out.” The judge’s decision on the case is expected in the next few weeks.

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