Sound familiar? Lambert employs fake ombudsman: The faux Strib readers’ rep is the gag that keeps on giving. After City Pages’ Matt Snyders gave it a go — to mixed effect — MSP’s Brian Lambert is trotting it out again in the form of "Randy," a "lightly-employed septic tank cleaner and part-time bear-hunting guide" from Superior, Wis. While it does remind us of the Strib’s heave-ho of any kind of reader’s liaison, it’s a pretty uninspired trope. What’s next? A limerick contest?

Online news in Randy’s hometown: Speaking of Superior, the town just across the border from Duluth is seeing big changes in the news business too. The Forum Communications–owned Daily Telegram, with a circulation of 5,500 papers a day, is dropping its daily print edition to focus on online news supplemented by a twice-weekly print version.

Pro-Coleman "distortion": Last week WCCO’s Pat Kessler fact-checked those Soprano-esque Coalition for a Democratic Workplace ads that present Al Franken as an enemy of unions and Norm Coleman as a "hero"; the ad falsely states that Franken wants to do away with secret-ballot voting for union elections. "The ad creates a distorted stereotype of the Mafia, and of labor unions as tools of organized crime," said Kessler. "And it misrepresents legislation that would make it easier for workers to organize unions." The coalition, despite a name that sounds pro-worker, was "formed to defeat legislation that would make it less of an ordeal for workers to form unions and bargain with management for better wages and working conditions," writes The Hill.