Strib HQ (Paul Schmelzer)

Strib HQ (Paul Schmelzer)

• ASNE pitches pulp: As an auto dealership — from an industry that’s famously dumped newspaper advertising — disguises ads as newspapers, one industry organization is dropping “paper” from its title. Editor & Publisher reports that the 87-year-old American Society of Newspaper Editors has voted overwhelmingly to go by the shorter name, the American Society of News Editors.

• Stribbers launch site to save paper: On Sunday, Star Tribune newsroom employees launched SavetheStrib.com to enlist readers in helping them “build a compelling case to potential new ownership that the citizens of Minnesota believe, as we do, that the Star Tribune is a vital part of our civic life.” Yesterday, the site uploaded a video filled with testimonials about the bankrupt paper’s impact on the lives of Twin Cities notables including Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak, St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman, Penumbra Theatre founder Lou Bellamy, Fox 9 anchor Robyne Robinson and others. The site has generated media interest, from news outlets including AFP, Editor & Publisher, and the Star Tribune itself — which, tellingly, ran a teensy 108-word, unbylined Associated Press story. (Kudos for not going with SaveOurStrib.com; its SOS acronym, while appropriate, might not have been well-received.)

• Immigrants and ACORN: Media Matters reports that immigrants and the housing advocacy group ACORN are two favored topics of conservatives in the media. “In some instances, the media linked their scapegoats to major news stories using misleading claims, and in others, they advanced outright falsehoods,” the site writes. In listing instances where the twin bogeymen are blamed for everything from the housing crisis to the financial collapse, there’s a lengthy Minnesota mention. Secretary of State Mark Ritchie gets namedropped by conservatives in the media a dozen times — because a get-out-the-vote organization he founded included ACORN among its partners. Some media, it’d seem, took to heart a National Republican Senatorial Committee memo revealed last November — in the midst of Minnesota’s U.S. Senate recount –  that specifically mentioned the Ritchie/ACORN connection.

File under: Oops. The student newspaper at Utah’s Brigham Young University, a Mormon institution, had to recall all 18,000 copies of a recent issue because a captioning error. A photo of several members of a Church of Latter Day Saints council described them as “apostates” — “a disloyal person who betrays or deserts his cause or religion” — instead of “apostles.”