The Rake

When I interviewed MNspeak founder Rex Sorgatz in spring 2007, he commented on his 2006 sale of his placeblogging site MNspeak to the Bartel family, owners of The Rake (and, formerly, City Pages): “My lingering concern with the site now is actually that they haven’t changed anything (except adding more ads)… I hoped someone would invest in it, push it in new directions, invent new stuff.” Last night, those long-awaited changes have occurred — and MNspeak is no more.

According to David Brauer, a mysterious listing indicates that the local snark monthly The Rake may be up for sale. Asking price? Less than $400,000.

Minnesota Monitor is sad to be unable to put up the purchase price, especially after this flattering article that claims we are the fourth most frequently mentioned online news site among [...]

Perry digs deep for site name: When asked about the name of his soon-to-launch community and news website a few weeks back, former City Pages editor Steve Perry joked about calling it The Hoe, as a garden-themed companion site to The Rake. But on TPT’s Almanac Friday, he revealed the name to be something deeper [...]

When it comes to harrowing feats, Rex Sorgatz — whose escape from his burning building in a fire that followed the Grand Forks flood was chronicled in a 1998 Pulitzer Prize-winning news story — says selling MNspeak, his community website, wasn’t one of them. He talked with local media and found the pre-Buzz.mn Star [...]

The Bleating Quirk: The Rake’s Brian Lambert says what’s been on the minds of many I’ve talked with recently: How come the Star Tribune community blog Buzz.mn has become the sole domain of James Lileks, who was hired to manage it? “I and others never had the impression it was supposed to be a one-person [...]

Your loss, our gain: With so many writers leaving the Star Tribune, recent buyouts at the Pioneer Press and some of City Pages’ best writers without jobs, online news could end up reaping the benefit. Minnesota Public Radio’s coverage of the Strib buyouts revealed that former Star Tribune publisher Joel Kramer is considering launching an [...]