A note from Matt Bartel announces that MNspeak and TheRake.com have been combined under the name SecretsoftheCity.com, a tagline long used for The Rake. While the comment-based content of MNspeak gets the center column of the home page, little of Sorgatz’s work remains (not even the name; I’d think there’d be brand equity in MNspeak). And, since few design or functionality upgrades were made after the sale, that’s probably a good thing.

The content — articles like we used to get from the print version of The Rake, along with the kind of quirky rapid-fire one- or two-line blog entries we grew to love at MNspeak — should be far more robust, and the crisp design calls attention to the content more than to itself. While a few tech glitches remain to be worked out, it’s a change for the better.

One thing that’s unclear: Max Sparber‘s byline hasn’t yet appeared. I’ve got messages in to the publication to find out if he’ll be part of unearthing said secrets of the city. Max Sparber remains the editor of “Today’s Talk.”

Update: Erica at Fresh.mn has more.

Want to know how to get linked on Minnesota Monitor?  We like boxes of chocolates and bottles of fine wine.

Ok, maybe that’s just me…

Jack Pine savaged: When the RNC Welcoming Committee, a self-described “anarchist / anti-authoritarian organizing body preparing for the 2008 Republican National Convention,” held a press conference on Monday to discuss plans for messing with visitors to the upcoming Republican convention, both Twin Cities dailies covered it. Randy Furst’s Strib piece was pretty straight, but Mediation’s Taylor Carik picks nits with Rachel Stassen-Berger’s description of the press conference site. Her Pioneer Press piece describes the venue as “the run-down Jack Pine Community Center.” Carik writes, “Granted, Jack Pine isn’t a palace royale, but how’s that for shedding a positive light on the ‘anarchists and anti-authoritarians’?”

Dear Abbe: Strib arts writer Mary Abbe gets a talking-to by D.C.-based critic Tyler Green, the country’s top art blogger, for her recent piece on vacant directorships at the Twin Cities two big art museums (full disclosure: I was editor of the Walker Art Center magazine until a few weeks ago). Of her piece that “deteriorates into a muddle,” he writes: “Abbe considers the MCA Chicago and the [contemporary art museum in Houston] ‘modern-art’ museums. (Uhh…) Abbe finds that ‘there are many perks to running an art museum — glamorous parties, extensive travel, attractive surroundings, great cafeteria food…’ (Uhh…) And Abbe believes that contemporary art museum directors may not need doctorates but they do need ‘street smarts.’ Uhh… whatevs.”

Link love (and hate): We’ve all felt it from time to time — lack of link love — but Metroblogging actually blogged it. A Metblog post “Stop Stealing Links” calls out “the Rake Forums” (er, MNspeak) for not following proper linkback credit for a piece. Unseemly commentage ensues.

Punniest agriculture-themed headline: Too bad it didn’t happen in the livestock building: “Man stabbed at State Fair is in stable condition.”

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Giving Minnesota Monitor first word on his new project, he agreed to an email interview in which he discussed the site’s tone and functionality (think: Gawker bred with MNspeak and The Stranger), his assessment of the competition, and the prominent national culture writer — and inlaw — who’ll be contributing.

Minnesota Monitor: Your site: What is it and how will it be different from City Pages and all the other local news sites running or in the works in the Twin Cities?

Steve Perry: It’ll be great! There’s maybe a dozen people directly or indirectly involved in this project so far, and most of them have already reported experiencing better sex and shinier hair.

It’s a Web-only local publication. Daily. Blogs- and multimedia-based, so the writing will usually be short and a lot of the content won’t revolve around writing. We’ll build to a pretty high posting volume, but there won’t be any feature-length writing, at least initially. There will be original reporting and news analysis, and local arts-and-scenes coverage, and we’ll do a lot of filtering of the most interesting events and conversations around town and in other media. I also want to experiment with using non-expository content like annotated maps and infographics as ways of telling complete stories, not just as illustration/accompaniment to longer pieces of newswriting.

So it’s a professional journalism site, but it’s just as importantly conceived to be a community-and-conversations site. I love the idea of building a forum that wantonly blurs the lines between “professional” and “amateur” voices wherever appropriate. After we started blogging extensively at City Pages, I was struck by how much I learned from the comments and correspondence it generated.

I didn’t just get a better sense of who the readers were; many of them made tangible contributions that helped me do my job better. But this all happened in the background, more or less. Since that time, what I’ve really wanted to do was a site that integrated, and more regularly foregrounded, what readers and users had to contribute. This area in particular seems so ripe for it. The degree of public engagement with media here has always been pretty incredible. And there’s a great web climate. Minneapolis/St. Paul never gets mentioned near the top in lists of “most wired cities” anymore, but it has the fifth-highest local Web penetration of any U.S. Top 15 market.

Lately I have learned many such fun facts.

MM: The local online media scene has its players, and they all seem to serve specific niches: MNspeak for a community message board, The Rake‘s online look at culture and dining, videoblogging from Chuck Olsen and The Uptake, community news and aggregation from the Daily Planet, original reporting from yours truly and my capable colleagues at Minnesota Monitor, and blogs by the mainstream magazines, radio stations, and newspapers. And Joel Kramer is starting up his enterprise later this year. Yours seems… different. A combination of some of the above and something new. What sites inspired different features you’re considering?

SP: All the local sites you mentioned are ones I’ve learned things by watching. Creatively, they and a few others have been trailblazers in working out interesting ways to do local web content. Especially Chuck Olsen.

I think The Stranger in Seattle does an amazing job with its Web content, and they have great, robust, funny community interaction happening all over the site. They’re definitely kindred spirits in my eyes. I like Gothamist and its affiliated sites in other cities. They capture part of the equation.

And the Gawker blogs are a very useful model for anybody setting out to do professional blogging, because nobody studies the factors that drive traffic — packaging, item lengths and formats, posting times, posting frequency — as doggedly as they do. I think Adrian Holovaty‘s work is always interesting, even though the Backfence project went toes up a couple of months ago. And there’s an intriguing Web-only publication called Crosscut, which is also in Seattle, but it’s much more an online newspaper than this project will be.

Content-wise, there aren’t a lot of models for what we’re hoping to do here. It’s a mash-up of elements. The site tools and features, and the navigational architecture, will be very simple. The goal is a site whose content and tool-set will scratch Web-savvy users where they itch, but at the same time make it transparently easy for technology-shy people to jump in and participate.

MM: Given the hybrid nature of what you’re working on, it doesn’t sound like you really have direct competition. There is no Minneapolist or GawkerMN or anything comparable. But Joel Kramer’s site, which (unlike yours) I’ve heard will be non-profit and follow somewhat of a newspaper model, seems to be the closest thing. He’s got some good staff — Roger Buoen of the Strib (and current Minnesota Monitor editorial mentor), former Pioneer Press editor Don Effenberger, City Pages’ Corey Anderson as Web editor, plus ties to lots of bought-out Stribbers — and a lot of funding. Do you see him as competition? How will you be funded? And finally, you told me once that a big-name national culture writer will be on board. Can you share who that is?

SP: I know a little about Joel Kramer’s site, and it sounds exciting. He and I have talked about it, and we talked in passing about the possibility of working together on certain aspects of what
we’re doing. We’ll see. I’m confident the sites will be pretty distinct from each other, but of course there will be competition for local Web ad dollars. There already is. The new factor is that you’ve got Web-only publications entering the picture. My feeling, as I told Kramer when we talked, is that we have more in common as new-media sites looking to put across our stories in the local Web ad market than we have separating us as potential competitors.

I don’t know when his site will formally launch — the buzz now seems to be October or November — but frankly I don’t know when our site will move from beta to hard launch, either. I made the decision early on to put off meeting with potential investors until I had not only a fully developed business plan but a site prototype built as well. So I’ve spent my own money on the latter, and secured some initial investment for the start-up, but I’m really just beginning to have the money conversations. And obviously they have an impact on the timing of the rollout.

The writer you alluded to is Greil Marcus, but I don’t want to give the impression he’ll have a blog of his own there or anything. He’s agreed to be an occasional contributor to our national media-culture blog. I’m thrilled to have him as a contributor, and although I wish I could say it was the sterling content plan that won his heart, the fact my wife is a) an important part of this project and b) his daughter may have tilted things a smidge.

There are some other national bylines that may find their way into that space as well, but it’s misleading in a way to talk about nationally known bylines — the site overall will be very much local.

MM: Got a name yet?

SP: Yes, but I’d rather hold off on disclosing it until the design work’s done and I can show as well as tell. Actually, the whole site’s under construction as we speak. I’ve got a great IT partner in the Clockwork web firm, and we’re on schedule to have it up in a limited, by-invitation beta next month.

MM: Give us a hint about the name. Will it be more straightforward, like Minnesota Monitor, or along the cryptic-poetic lines of The Rake?

SP: I always thought a publication called The Hoe would make a nice companion to The Rake — no disrespect intended to The Rake, but the name conjured visions of an entire empire of niche publications named for garden tools.

But that’s not it. I couldn’t have gotten the URL anyway. The name we chose is sort of eccentric, and we hope memorable. Playful but with resonances we liked. The word “Daily” is in the name. Let’s call it the Daily X for now.

Perry is looking for 100 beta-testers for the new site and invites Minnesota Monitor readers to sign up. Email beta.list@gmail.com.

The story has riled readers at MNspeak, including one who wonders if Franken’s opponent, Sen. Norm Coleman, will get such unflattering treatment in an upcoming issue. City Pages editor Kevin Hoffman commented at the site, stating that the piece is “a lighthearted story not meant to be a huge expose.” Reached by email later, he said, “I thought the story was newsworthy because Al Franken is running for a major public office. If George W. Bush liked to gnaw on a sweaty towel and growl like a dog while running on the treadmill, don’t you think it would be worth publishing?”

Anatomy of a meme: Track this one: Dick Cheney gives an interview in 1994 about why the United States didn’t go into Baghdad in the first Gulf War, saying that to do so, alone, would’ve landed us in a “quagmire” and wouldn’t have been worth the potential loss of human lives. C-Span revives the footage in 2007 on its website and in broadcasts. The world fails to pay attention. Then YouTube user GrandTheftCountry posts it, it gets more than 430,000 hits, and now CNN is covering it. The local angle: Steve Perry, former editor of City Pages, picked up on Cheney’s now-and-then contradiction in a 2003 blog post. He found an earlier speech — at the Soref Symposium in 1991 — in which Cheney said White House discussions about invading Baghdad were met with a “resounding ‘no’.” He said that it “would have been a mistake for us to get bogged down in the quagmire inside Iraq” and asked, “How many casualties should the United States accept in that effort to create clarity and stability in a situation that is inherently unstable?” (Download the speech here.)

Media Monitor continues…Fox whacks Wiki facts: Wired reported yesterday that many entities are changing Wikipedia entries to stamp out criticism, including touchscreen voting machine manufacturer Diebold, the CIA, political campaigns and, according to tech bloggers, Fox News . Through a search tool called the Wikiscanner, users can trace anonymous editors to the IP addresses of the computers they use. The tech blog O’Reilly, for instance, used the scanner to discover that someone at a Fox News IP modified the entry for Al Franken to delete a quote from Franken that the 2003 lawsuit against the Minnesotan by the news outlet was “literally laughed out of court” and that the judge’s ruling that the suit was “wholly without merit” was “a good characterization of Fox News itself.” (Here’s a more complete list of changes made by Fox.) No news yet on what the scanner revealed about, say, changes made by users at New York Times’ IPs.

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Should must-see ads be banned during tragedies? Media consultant Amy Gahran writes that “maybe news organizations should consider temporarily suspending must-watch ads before granting access to online multimedia coverage of breaking news of a tragedy.” Writing for Poynter.org, she recalls watching a slideshow of images on the collapse at the Washington Post. “I was dismayed to have to watch a short video ad before I could get to the slideshow. That seemed crass to me, given the circumstances of breaking news of a tragedy,” she writes. “It got worse: When I reloaded the slideshow in a separate browser tab, the ad that played was the ‘scarf’ commercial, from Nationwide Insurance’s ‘Life comes at you fast’ campaign. Talk about bad, bad taste and timing…“

“Collapsed profession”: Watching from Georgia, former Star Tribune and Minnesota Monthly editor Leonard Witt writes, “We also watch the news from afar to see how awful CNN really is. Here is an unfolding disaster, where footage should be pouring out and instead we have more talking heads with a few minutes of video played over and over.” He curiously applauds online coverage by the Strib and PiPress, before making a parallel between the 35W disaster and his “collapsing profession,” specifically naming the Strib, “which now is a gutted remnant of its past under the ownership of equity firm Avista Capital Partners.”

Covers statewide: The tragedy dominated front pages across the state. See how the Star Tribune, Pioneer Press, St. Cloud Times, Duluth News Tribune, West Central Tribune, and Winona Daily News covered it. Hi-res images via Newseum.

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Related:Bridges, By The Numbers

Related: 35W Bridge Collapses into Mississippi River

I Harte Par: While Chris Harte, chairman of the Star Tribune Co., says Par Ridder won’t be fired over his admitted theft of Pioneer Press data, a former PiPress managing editor said, “You don’t get a do-over for ethics in the journalism business.” Ken Doctor, an analyst with Outsell Research, said, “I’m surprised he hasn’t stepped down already.”

Lawsuit… Jumpsuit? While MNspeakers are having a great time photoshopping Ridder in a prison jumpsuit, the Pioneer Press isn’t filing a criminal complaint… yet. They’re seeking damages, the removal of former PiPress execs from their jobs at the Strib and a promise that the Minneapolis paper will stop poaching employees from the paper Ridder’s family used to run. However, the Strib’s Matt McKinney reports that the Pioneer Press “may seek criminal charges unless Avista lets Ridder go.”

The Silver Spoon Theory: Some local newsroom insiders are suggesting that MediaNews CEO William Dean Singleton won’t settle out of court, instead preferring to watch Ridder squirm on the witness stand. So the next question is: Is it personal? The Rake’s Brian Lambert, who keeps bumping into Singleton during bathroom breaks, asked Singleton point blank. Singleton denied it, but his replies suggest another explanation. He told Lambert, “Look, I’ve been in newspapers since I was 15,” and, indeed, Singleton scrapped his way to the top, often inviting controversy along the way. “In the case of Par I think some of the explanation [for his actions] lies in the fact that he had everything given to him,” he said. “He felt he was entitled to act as he has.”

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Rex’s “corporate blogs” T-shirt: That interview I did with Rex Sorgatz, MNspeak’s creator, generated quite the comment thread at his old digital homestead, including a note from the man himself explaining the T-shirt he wore in the illustration to Minnesota Monitor’s piece — a reference, lost on me, to an infamous Nirvana cover shot for Rolling Stone.

What gives — or rather, who? The MSNBC.com story listing 144 broadcast, web and print journalists who gave to political candidates — all but 17 to Democrats or left-leaning organizations — includes two locals, Fox 9 morning anchor Alix Kendall and Star Tribune copy editor Barbara Haugen. The donations were relatively small: Kendall gave $250 to the Midwest Values PAC; Haugen gave the same amount to Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s campaign last October. Haugen wasn’t quoted by MSNBC.com, but Strib managing editor Scott Gillespie says there is no ban on political activity by journalists, but said “we dissuade the entire staff” from active participation in partisan politics. Kendall, quoted by MSNBC.com, said, “I don’t think that working for a news organization I give up my rights… I think it’s my civic duty to be involved in what matters to me. I think it’s ridiculous that anyone who’s sitting in front of a camera doesn’t have an opinion — come on, we all do.”

It’s news, but is it new news? Later today, 30-year Star Tribune reporter and new Minnesota Monitor contributor Eric Black will offer his perspective, recalling a 1996 analysis he wrote for the Minneapolis paper on a then-stunning finding: 89 percent of Washington reporters had voted for Bill Clinton in 1992 while 7 percent voted for George Bush.

more insideLess outrage over rightwing radio: The report has the blogosphere, particularly the rightmost end of it, buzzing, yet another study released this week, by the Center for American Progress and Free Press, has gotten far less play. Despite independent polls showing that a majority of Americans support progressive ideals, 91 percent of all weekday radio programming is conservative, according to the organizations’ analysis of content at 257 news and talk radio stations across the country. Titled “The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio” [pdf], the report concluded that “the gap between conservative and progressive talk radio is the result of multiple structural problems in the U.S. regulatory system, particularly the complete breakdown of the public trustee concept of broadcast, the elimination of clear public interest requirements for broadcasting, and the relaxation of ownership rules including the requirement of local participation in management. “

Minnesota Monthly editor dies: Carol Ratelle Leach, the 43-year-old Minnesota Monthly senior editor, passed away at her home Thursday. Our deepest condolences go out to her husband,  Dan, and three children.

“It’s possible we may be picking up a few people from the last round of Star Tribune buyouts,” he wrote one advertiser. Reached by email, he said he hasn’t talked with any Strib writers yet, but confirmed the plan for columnists.

His dad, Tom Bartel of The Rake, has already given a food and dining column to former Strib writer and director of Twin Cities Media Alliance Jeremy Iggers. Iggers says he and Anne Bauer will be blogging for a new food and dining website The Rake is launching.

The news game: The winners of a $250,000 Knight News Challenge grant are fleshing out their plans to use it to make a digital news simulator. Nora Paul, director of the Institute of New Media Studies, and Kathleen Hansen, director of the Minnesota Journalism Center, will use the cash to create a game called “Playing the News,” which will help community members use news resources in actual contexts.

Paul says the game will help users understand the complexities of news gathering, “using real issues as they arise, the words and actions of real stakeholders, the actual reports and documents generated by policy experts, the news stories created by journalists and other sorts of information.”

Dateline: Jail. Former Minneapolis City Council member Dean Zimmerman has a blog — written from a federal prison cell in Colorado, where he’s serving a 2.5-year sentence on bribery charges.

From Duluth to The OC: Marti Buscaglia, five-year publisher of the Duluth News Tribune and a former Pioneer Press executive, has been named publisher of the Orange County Register in Santa Ana, Calif. The Orange County native said she leaves “with a heavy heart,” but the move to a larger paper — 1,400 employees with a daily circulation of 300,000 compared to the 65,000 issues the Duluth paper puts out on Sunday — must be appealing. And then there’s the weather.

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