Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.
Steve Grove’s Fundraising Pitch Shrugs Off Violent Rhetoric Against Journalists
How would you feel if you woke up one morning and read that your boss was refusing to defend you from a soon-to-be president’s inflammatory language?
That happened to Star Tribune journalists this weekend, as CEO/publisher Steve Grove wrote the following in Sunday’s paper:
President-elect Donald Trump has called the media “the enemy of the people” and recently said at a rally “I don’t mind” if someone shoots at reporters.
Most Minnesotans will surely find those statements distasteful, but I know from speaking with many across the state that plenty of people do share the feeling that the institution of media is one of the problems in our country.
If “distasteful’ is a feeble word to describe Trump’s willingness to target journalists, proceeding to shrug such remarks off with “well, he’s just saying what people think” is downright spineless.
Grove’s refusal to even say national leaders shouldn’t quip about journalists being shot is even more reprehensible when you consider that the Minneapolis Police Department wounded multiple Star Tribune reporters during the George Floyd uprisings.
“We aspire to be a paper of all, not of the elite,” continues the chair of the Itasca Project, whose newspaper is owned by billionaire Glen Taylor. “To serve you better, we must double down on reflecting the voices and concerns of our audience, and of all Minnesotans.”
This style of marketing-speak will be familiar to regular readers of Grove’s contributions to the Strib so far. And in context, this equivocating makes all too much sense, because it leads up to what seems Grove's real purpose in this piece: to ask for donations to the Strib's Local News Fund.
But what if people don’t trust journalists because journalists tell truths that contradict their beliefs? What if people don’t trust journalists because demagogues convince them not to trust journalists? What if people don’t trust journalists because the corporate news sources that dominate the media landscape prop up those demagogues by broadcasting disinformation and outright lies?
These are hard questions to address, but that’s the information climate that Grove's Star Tribune is up against if it wants to reach greater Minnesota. Asking readers “what do you want us to be?” while soliciting donations is not going to get him there.
Because ultimately, it doesn’t matter how many Karen Tolkkinen columns about civility you run, you’re never going to earn anyone’s respect by refusing to defend your staff against violent, dehumanizing rhetoric.
Have a little fucking dignity, man.
Meet the Man Who Baits Abuse by Calling Minneapolis Lovely on the Internet
Mike Norton, a friend and benefactor to Racket, has constructed a curious life for himself on Twitter. The Minneapolis businessman/occasional politician will post innocuous photos and videos—bike rides around the lake, strolls through Lakewood Cemetery, visits to Uptown—and comment on the pleasantness of city life.
That’s when, invariably, the trolls storm into his mentions. They call Minneapolis a burning Marxist hellhole, they call Norton a libtard cuck—so on, so forth. His account has become a fascinating case study of online behavior, and today the Star Tribune’s Zoë Jackson endeavored to find out what makes Mike and his many haters tick.
“It was basically like trolling people that don’t live in Minneapolis, but want to tell you how things are in Minneapolis, it was kind of a clapback,” Norton says of his baiting right-wing hotheads. “They are real human beings, mostly, that are genuinely upset at Minneapolis just for existing.” Jackson found a PR pro to comment on Norton’s social experiment, and she discovered Norton’s real motivation: In true poster form, he told the local newspaper of record that he posts, “for the love of the game.”
Predictably, the Strib’s coverage of Norton has stirred an ugly cesspool on Twitter, which these days is par for the course on that platform. Lovely, to borrow Norton’s go-to descriptor for the city he loves.
Dive Into Dive Bar Content
Dive bar hot takes are automatic click goldmines, though not all of 'em are created equal. Last year the Strib's stab at the genre elicited just minor quibbles from us, and today MSP Mag's Steve Marsh produced an even better roundup.
"Dive bar is one of those philosophical terms (like pornography or love) that provokes people to argue about what qualifies and what doesn’t, even while struggling to actually define it," his piece begins. From there, we venture to bars siloed off into distinct categories—Transcendent Bar Food, Timeless Bars, Bars with Bands, etc.
Purebred dives like Jimmy’s, Palmer's, and Neumann’s get well-deserved love, and Marsh isn't afraid to praise the concocted dankness of newer joints like Bull's Horn (read our glowing profile of owner Doug Flicker) and Bina's (which drew divey skepticism from our reviewer). Marsh's story, not unlike a driver leaving Half Time Rec at 2 a.m., veers wildly between essay and listicle, but not unlike the establishments he highlights, it's a whole lotta fun.
(CBS News) Sunday Morning Coming Down with the Cactus Blossoms
As explored in great detail by Racket readers, last week was an absolute nightmare, one that may well usher in a prolonged nightmare era. It's really, really bad, folks! So thank you, CBS News Sunday Morning, for offering a brief and beautiful moment of distraction on yesterday's nationally broadcast program featuring harmonizing Twin Cities country duo the Cactus Blossoms. Enjoy the throwback music of brothers Jack Torrey and Page Burkum below—ya gotta find joy in the little things these days.
