Media

Bradlee Dean, the founder of You Can Run But You Cannot Hide International told the attendees of the group’s “Appeal to Heaven” fundraiser that the media “demonizes” him for bringing his fiery brand of Christianity into public schools. Then he pointed out one of the reporters he feels is behind such attacks, the Minnesota Independent’s Andy Birkey.

Why is Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann all over the media? Because she wants to be. That’s according to Bachmann’s new media director, Dave Dziok. She has supersized her communications staff in order to put herself out there — and out there she’s been: In the last nine days, she’s done six national cable news appearances.

How bad have the Star Tribune’s woes gotten? If a tweet by David de Young is any indicator, bad enough that they won’t honor commitments to contributors. The founder of the music site “How Was the Show?,” de Young writes that the newspaper sent him a copy of its “Commencement of Chapter 11″ bankruptcy papers, [...]

The Blog Cabin, MinnPost’s new blog about blogs, is run by new hire Justin Piehowski (formerly of KSTP). Its name bears a striking resemblance to another political blog:  Blog Cabin, the blog of national gay group, the Log Cabin Republicans.
Piehowski has vowed to reject blogs who are too harsh and to lay down the law [...]

Michele Bachmann has done over 20 major television appearances since the beginning of September — far more than any member of Minnesota’s congressional delegation. How does a freshman Congress member from the minority party find herself in the limelight so often?

Easy. You and I pay for it.

If you’re curious to know how confident the Obama campaign feels about its widening lead in Minnesota, here’s a dollars-and-cents clue. According to figures released by the University of Wisconsin Advertising Project late last week, the presidential campaigns of John McCain and Barack Obama spent over $28 million nationally on TV advertising during the week of Sept. 28-Oct. 4. And there’s an interesting anomaly in the Minnesota totals: Among states identified as Midwestern battlegrounds — by UWAP’s reckoning, these are Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania (?) and Wisconsin — Minnesota is one of only two where McCain outspent Obama (the other is Iowa), and by a whopping margin of almost exactly 5-1 ($608,000 – $121,000).

The thrust of the McCain campaign’s plan for gaffe-proofing its standard-bearer is to make sure his only unscripted press exposure is with local newspapers and TV stations. (And, where Sarah Palin is concerned, to warn all comers that “respect and deference” are due.)
It’s a plan that’s served them well, but occasionally it backfires. As in [...]

Of the 800-plus people who were arrested or detained in conjunction with RNC protests, a good chunk of them — 43, by our count — were members of the news media. Media representatives in town to cover the events, from both big and small presses, were slapped with citations and pending charges ranging in severity, including unlawful assembly, obstructing the legal process, misdemeanor interference with a peace officer and felony to riot plus other riot pretenses. Many others who weren’t arrested or detained endured pepper-spray and other arms used for crowd-control. Here’s our list of journalists who were detained or arrested. If anyone’s missing, please add them in comments.

The Democratic National Committee is coming to the Republican National Convention — or at least, across the street. Hoping to keep a post-DNC bump, the party is setting up a media office across from the Xcel Energy Center to serve as a rapid-response center for countering whatever goes on inside. The “More of the Same” center — to be accessible via www.justmoreofthesame.com — will host media spokespeople, two dozen fact-checkers (who’ll fisk every GOP speech) and a satellite truck to transit interviews anywhere in the world.