Minnpost unveils design: Two biggish announcements at last night’s media get-together at Minnpost: publisher Joel Kramer has hired on 612 Authentic, a local group of videographers, to bring motion to the site; and they’ll be doing five- to 10-minute segments on TPT’s Almanac “roughly every other week.” Kramer also unveiled mockups of the site design. The maroon-and-beige palette from the current splash page will stay, accompanied by a tightly packed grid of story ledes and a series of ink renderings by illustrator Hugh Bennewitz, that will go along with “Current Posts.” (I’m not a big fan: the cartoonish heads, like G.R. Anderson’s at right, seem too familiar — like The Rake meets Politico. Still, if I had to choose between having a photo or a sketch of me appear online, I’d go the arty route.)

The ads/money nexus: Kramer says they’ve received more than $120,000 from 260 member-donors, and that’s on top of the more than $1 million kicked in by eight local families. When I caught up with Chuck Olsen, Executive Correspondent for The Uptake afterwards, he responded to Kramer’s announcement that, in principle, the site will have “no advertising designed to distract readers” from the content: No Strib-like Denny Hecker wallpaper or Bachman’s popups. Olsen, in his best Kramer impersonation, said, “We won’t have intrusive ads… because we have a hundred bajillion dollars!”

In which Lambert and Rybak earn: 1.) Slots on Strib gossip columnist C.J.’s shit list, and 2.) a conjoined nickname, Lambak!

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