State senator says he won’t meet with groups that backed his opponent

Republican Sen. Scott Newman of Hutchinson told the Minnesota Nurses Association late last week that they would not get a meeting with him because they endorsed his DFL opponent Hal Kimball, according to DFL-leaning blog, Bluestem Prairie. In fact, Newman’s office said that no groups who supported his opponent will get a meeting and, according to the Associated Press, Newman said he will not speak to the media regarding his office policy. Update: The Star Tribune spoke with Newman who said the policy was a mistake.

Minnesota AP’s ‘if it bleeds, it leads’ guidelines criticized

Save the News, a media reform project of Free Press, criticized the Minnesota Associated Press Friday for story submission guidelines that focus on calamities like train wrecks, car accidents and tornadoes — with the more death the better.…

National media reflect on Franken’s first year: ‘quiet,’ ‘low-key’

The Associated Press and Newsweek posted articles Monday reflecting on Al Franken’s first full year as a U.S. Senator, and both say he’s upended expectations that he’d be loud, brash and comical. Franken told…

Credit crisis hits local media

MinnPost’s David Brauer takes the Star Tribune to task today for failing to credit Minnesota Public Radio on an MPR story that the Strib got via the Associated Press. Irony alert: Frustrated by just such uncredited…

AP cites one man who voted for neither to say state’s tired of Franken-Coleman war

It’s apparently hard for reporters to find an ordinary voter to comment on the extraordinary struggle over Minnesota’s vacant U.S. Senate seat. The latest example: The Associated Press cited one person — who didn’t vote for either Al Franken or…

Star Tribune starts collapsing (sections, that is) with twice-told tale of bankruptcy

The Jan. 1 edition of the Star Tribune ran two versions of the same AP story (with only slight variations) about well-known businesses going bankrupt: one inside the A section and the other

RNC Day One Diary: All roads lead to Kellogg Boulevard

Though thousands marched through the streets of St. Paul today without incident, it was difficult to ignore a roving group of protesters who were sometimes marching and sometimes dashing their way through a parade route they reinvented by the minute. Minnesota Independent’s Jeff Severns Guntzel followed them to the day’s chemical-soaked climax.

MDE (NON-)SHOCKER: AP PROFILE OF GOP’s BRODKORB OMITS MANY PAID PARTY GIGS

Text corrected: see note below

The Associated Press profiles Republican blogger Michael Brodkorb today, praising his two “direct hits” on Al Franken over the Democratic senate candidate’s tax problems. The…