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Senate candidate scrubs racist comments from Twitter

By Andy Birkey | 12.31.09 | 10:48 am

Republican State Senate candidate Mike Parry scrubbed more than 43 tweets after fellow Twitterers found racist and homophobic content in the candidate’s Twitter stream. Parry is running to replace retiring Sen. Dick Day in southeastern Minnesota.

Minnesota gets an ‘F’ on freedom of government information

By Chris Steller | 07.23.09 | 2:59 pm

logoMinnesota and 37 other states got failing grades for their public-records laws from the Better Government Association (BGA), which scored states in five categories: response time, appeals, expedited review, fees and sanctions. Sluggish action on government-data requests…

Twitter’s utility for protests, now evident in Iran, debuted in St. Paul during RNC

By Chris Steller | 06.22.09 | 10:23 am

Iran has proven the headline prescient, even if the terminology needed tweaking: “The revolution will be Twittered.” That was the title of Tom Elko’s Sept. 9, 2008, Minnesota Independent post…

Coleman’s ‘ethernet’ no match for other ‘Conservative New Media FAILS’ contenders

By Paul Schmelzer | 06.16.09 | 11:40 am

Former Sen. Norm Coleman’s recent comment that the future of the GOP lies in the “ethernet” — first reported on by the Minnesota Independent — gets an honorable mention in Talking Points Memo’s list of the “

AM.MN: Hausers’ media ride turns literal

By Chris Steller | 05.26.09 | 8:30 am

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The Hauser family’s media ride climaxes with … a ride home, provided by the media. Las Vegas-based Asgaard Media got Colleen Hauser and her cancer-stricken son Daniel off the lam, onto a chartered red-eye flight and home…

Pawlenty’s Twitter page looks socialist

By Chris Steller | 04.24.09 | 7:48 am

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Gov. Tim Pawlenty unveiled his new Twitter home page only yesterday. Then why does the color scheme suggest it was designed for a Soviet socialist in the 1920s? (After the jump is Aleksandr Rodchenko‘s cover for…

Larry King: ‘I’m not a sore loser. I’m not gonna pull a Norm Coleman’

By Chris Steller | 04.17.09 | 11:20 pm

cnn-kutcher-twitter-collageHere’s evidence that Minnesota’s post-election battle for U.S. Senate has permeated pop culture. Al Franken and Norm Coleman were cited this week by contestants in another competition that attracted millions of partisans: the race between movie actor Ashton Kutcher…

Obama’s speech pours praise on Minneapolis with 57-cops sauce

By Chris Steller | 02.24.09 | 9:10 pm

mpls-57-sauceMinneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak finally got a big public payback for his early backing of Barack Obama as candidate for president when Obama gave the city a shout-out in his address before Congress tonight. Speaking about the…

Tweeting on the brink of bankruptcy: Strib requires bloggers to use Twitter

By Paul Schmelzer | 01.12.09 | 12:38 pm

With the Star Tribune possibly within two weeks of filing bankruptcy (according to newsroom Guild sources), we’re seeing yet another wave of big-name departures at the Strib: columnist Katherine Kersten, online managing editor

MnIndy’s Best: Top RNC tweets

By Paul Schmelzer | 12.26.08 | 8:30 am

Tweets — the 140-character mini-blog posts sent via Twitter — are very much of-the-moment and therefore often have a fairly short shelf-life. But in reviewing these brief dispatches sent by our reporters during the Republican National Convention, we found that, despite the 140-character restraint and the inevitable typos that result from punching in text on a cellphone while ducking teargas canisters, an RNC-only best-of list was a fitting way to capture the humor, excitement and surreal nature of last summer’s event.