Star Tribune

225px The August 2, 2007 front page of the Star Tribune
Type	Daily newspaper
Format	Broadsheet
Owner	The Star Tribune Company
Publisher	Michael J. Klingensmith
Editor	Nancy Barnes
Founded	1867 (as the Minneapolis Tribune)
Headquarters	425 Portland Avenue Minneapolis, Minnesota 55488  United States
Circulation	295,438 Daily 493,027 Sunday[1]
ISSN	0895-2825
OCLC number	61312696
Official website	StarTribune.com

The Star Tribune (often abbreviated Star Trib or Strib) is the largest newspaper in the U.S. state of Minnesota and is published seven days each week in an edition for the Minneapolis-Saint Paul metropolitan area. A statewide version is also available across Minnesota and parts of Wisconsin, Iowa, South Dakota, and North Dakota. The paper's largest competitor is the St. Paul-based Pioneer Press, though it competes with a number of other papers in its wide circulation area.

History[link]

The Star Tribune headquarters in downtown Minneapolis

Today's Star Tribune is the product of the merger in 1982 between the Minneapolis Star, an evening newspaper, and the Minneapolis Tribune, a morning newspaper published by the same company.

Several earlier mergers preceded that one by many years, as outlined below. The Minneapolis Tribune was founded in 1867, and operated by the Murphy family between 1891 and 1941. The Minneapolis Journal was founded in 1878 as an evening paper.

The Minneapolis Times was a morning paper starting in 1889; it was purchased by the Tribune in 1905 and its name was used in various forms until 1948. Finally the Minnesota Daily Star began printing in 1920, and later became the Minneapolis Star, distributed in the evening.

John Cowles, Sr. (1898–1983)

The Cowles family bought the Star in 1935 and the Journal in 1939 and the two were merged into the Star-Journal, soon truncated to Star. The Cowles family bought the Tribune in 1941. The papers were operated as separate morning and evening papers. In 1944, John Cowles, Sr. hired William P. Steven, a Wisconsin native and former editor of the Tulsa Tribune, as managing editor of the two papers. Steven was named vice president and executive editor in 1954.^[2]

During his tenure in Minneapolis, he served one term as president of the Associated Press Managing Editors Association in 1949 and became first chairman of the organization's Continuing Studies Committee.^[3] By August 1960, John Cowles, Jr. had been named vice president and associate editor of the two papers. It was soon apparent that he disapproved of Steven's hard-nosed approach to journalism. He told Steven that he would be the person clearing Steven's orders. When Steven balked, the younger Cowles fired him.^[2]

In 1982, the papers were merged into the Minneapolis Star and Tribune, and in 1987 adopted the present name Star Tribune and the slogan "Newspaper of the Twin Cities". In 1998 The McClatchy Company purchased Cowles Media Company and sold off its other holdings, keeping the Star Tribune.

In 1987, the paper had separate Minneapolis, St. Paul, and statewide editions but today it has two editions: a Minneapolis-St. Paul metro-area edition, and a Midwest edition covering news throughout Minnesota and parts of surrounding states.

On December 26, 2006 McClatchy Co sold the paper to private-equity firm Avista Capital Partners for $530 million, less than half of what McClatchy paid for the paper in 1998, when it bought the Star Tribune from Cowles Media for $1.2 billion.^[4]

In March 2007 Par Ridder was named Publisher of the Star Tribune, after his predecessor, J. Keith Moyer, decided to leave the newspaper after the sale.^[5] Ridder resigned on December 7, 2007.^[6] Ridder is a member of the Ridder family that had owned Knight-Ridder, the publishers of several newspapers including the (rival) Saint Paul Pioneer Press. Ridder's arrival resulted in considerable litigation when it was discovered that he had stolen a hard drive which was Pioneer Press property. This hard drive was laden with information about employees and advertisers which the Pioneer Press characterized as "trade secrets". Ridder also took two high-ranking staff members with him to the Minneapolis paper, which raised eyebrows as the employees in these roles usually have non-compete clauses in their contracts (which prohibit their employment with rival papers for a period of time specified under their employment agreement). On September 18, 2007, Ridder was removed from his new post by a Ramsey County judge.^[7][8][9]

On January 15, 2009, as the nation's 15th largest daily paper, the paper filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.^{[10][11][12][13]}

On September 17, 2009 the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York approved a Bankruptcy plan for the paper which saw it emerge from bankruptcy protection on Sept. 28. The paper’s senior secured lenders took hold of approximately 95 percent of the stock in the post-bankruptcy company.^[14]

Management[link]

Michael J. Klingensmith is publisher and CEO of Star Tribune Media Company LLC with overall responsibility for all news and business operations of the company. ^[6]

Having emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, the newspaper’s former ownership group, led by New York City-based Avista Capital Partners, has no stake in the company.^[14]

Star Tribune Assembly Process

Star Tribune Assembly Process

Star Tribune Assembly Process

See also[link]

• City Pages
• The Minnesota Daily
• MinnPost.com
• Pioneer Press
• Jim Klobuchar – Minneapolis Star-Tribune columnist and father of U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar, D-MN
• Sid Hartman - Minneapolis Star-Tribune sportswriter
• Katherine Kersten

References[link]

External links[link]

• Star Tribune website
• Star Tribune's Vita.mn entertainment website

Additional resources[link]

• A collection of survey data and statistics used to produce the Metro Poll and the Minnesota Poll for the Minneapolis Star and Tribune Company is available for research use at the Minnesota Historical Society.
• Nieman Journalism Lab. "Minneapolis Star Tribune". Encyclo: an encyclopedia of the future of news. http://www.niemanlab.org/encyclo/minneapolis-star-tribune/. Retrieved 1 April 2012. 

This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (October 2009)

James Lileks (born August 9, 1958 in Fargo, North Dakota) is an American journalist, columnist, and blogger living in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Career[link]

Lileks has had a wide-ranging career as a columnist, radio personality, author, and prominent blogger.

Columnist[link]

Lileks began his writing career as a columnist for the Minnesota Daily while he was a student at the University of Minnesota. At that time, his byline was "James r. Lileks", with his middle initial, for "Ralph", in lower case.

After college, he eventually got a regular job writing for City Pages, a Twin Cities alternative tabloid. He served as a general columnist for City Pages until 1988, when he was hired as a columnist for the St. Paul Pioneer Press, which led to a columnist job with Newhouse News Service and thence the The Washington Post for a period in the early nineties.

In the mid-nineties, Lileks returned to the Twin Cities for a job with the Star Tribune, retaining his Newhouse column until late 2006.

The Star Tribune discontinued Lileks's column in 2007, eventually naming him editor of the now defunct community website buzz.mn.

Radio personality[link]

Lileks's first foray into radio came in 1987, while he was a writer with City Pages. He became a regular guest on the Geoff Charles show, an afternoon talk show on KSTP. When Charles left the Twin Cities, Lileks was tagged to fill the slot, and served as an afternoon-drive host on KSTP for a time in the late eighties; his show was a fairly traditional talk show, with topics, callers, and guest interviews.

In the mid-nineties, after returning from Washington DC, Lileks reappeared on KSTP with a new program, The Diner -- a less traditional show set in a fictional fifties-era diner. The program featured a running loop of kitchen sound effects in the background and verbal interplay with "cook" (and producer) Jeremy "Kodiak" Kienitz, and was in many ways a precursor of Lileks's later written ventures.

The show, unconventional by mid-nineties talk radio standards, lasted several years on weekday evenings and then a few more as a weekend-evening program before leaving the air in the late nineties.

In late 2006, The Diner was revived in podcast form. Selected original Diner programs and new original Diners are available on Lileks's website. Lileks is also a weekly guest on the Hugh Hewitt show,^[1] Pajamas Media.com's weekly PJM Political'' show on Sirius-XM Satellite Radio's POTUS channel, and a frequent guest and guest host on the Northern Alliance Radio Network program.

Lileks has also been a monologist for the public affairs program Almanac, carried on Minnesota PBS television stations.

Website[link]

Lileks's blog, the Daily Bleat,^[2] began in 1997. The Bleat covers many topics in his personal life (including his daughter Natalie ("Gnat") and his dog Jasper), politics from a conservative viewpoint, and cultural points of interest ranging from art and architecture to movies and music (one perennial topic is the Minnesota State Fair). Known for dry humor and an engaging writing style, Lileks especially grew in fame in the blogosphere following 9/11 and the subsequent explosion in the popularity of blogs for spreading both news and general punditry.

Lileks's Web site also hosts a vast repository of vintage advertisements and other ephemera from the 1920s to the 1970s. Lileks displays creative, irreverent and politically incorrect (by today's standards) advertisements, photographs, pamphlets, comic strips, matchbooks, currency, postcards, cheesecake drawings, and architecture, usually accompanied by wry analysis and commentary. His section dissecting the works of cheesecake artist Art Frahm, for instance, observes the devastating effects of celery on the gravitational pull of women's underwear.

Other work[link]

Lileks is a regular contributor to the center-right social networking and blogging network Ricochet.com, and co-hosts the site's podcast with Rob Long and Peter Robinson.^[3]

Star Tribune controversy and resolution[link]

On May 7, 2007, Lileks announced that his home paper, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, was ending his column in the interest of budget cuts and putting him on a straight local news beat:^[4]

My column will end a week from this Friday. (There’s a series of pieces I can’t wait to write.) After that, it's just-the-facts-ma'am - and I'll no longer be telecommuting, either. This means I will start burning my share of hydrocarbons like a good American. Hell, I may leave the vehicle running all day outside the building just to make up for lost time. Maybe I will put a green roof on the car to balance things out. Some turf, some switchgrass. It's murder on the paint but we all must do our part.

The move, which was forced by cuts in other parts of the Star Tribune's newsroom, drew criticism from many,^[5][6][7] including Dave Barry.^[8] Mike Argento, president of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, said in reaction to the news:^[9]

It's just a reflection of the sad state of the newspaper industry. Many of the people running newspapers don't have a vision. They're concerned with dollars and cents, and the bottom line. They should look at the future, not just slash and burn.

On June 5, 2007, the Star Tribune changed course and announced Lileks would serve as editor of buzz.mn, a new community site featuring content from Lileks and members alike.^[10] Buzz.mn ceased publication of new content in July 2009.

Bibliography[link]

Fiction[link]

• Falling up the Stairs (1988, ISBN 0-525-24655-X)
• Mr. Obvious (1995, ISBN 0-671-73705-8)

Columns[link]

• Notes of a Nervous Man (1991, ISBN 0-671-73701-5)
• Fresh Lies (1995, ISBN 0-671-73703-1)

Humor[link]

• The Gallery of Regrettable Food (2001, ISBN 0-609-60782-0)
• Interior Desecrations: Hideous Homes from the Horrible '70s (2004, ISBN 1-4000-4640-8)
• Mommy Knows Worst: Highlights from the Golden Age of Bad Parenting Advice (2005, ISBN 1-4000-8228-5)
• Gastroanomalies: Questionable Culinary Creations from the Golden Age of American Cookery (2007, ISBN 0-307-38307-5)
• RiffTrax: - Spider-man 3 with Mike Nelson - special guest riffer (http://www.rifftrax.com/rifftrax/spiderman-3)

Notes[link]

External links[link]

• Homepage
• The Quirk - Star-Tribune column
• Newhouse
• buzz.mn - Local networking site where he serves as editor
• The Blog of Things - Lilek's blog on Star-Tribune site
• Twitter account