Stray Hawkeye

It was announced on Monday that the Star Tribune, one of the Twin Cities two major newspapers, has finally emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy.  Not a whole lot of news there, they’ve been struggling for a while, had lots of layoffs, and as long as I’ve lived here there’s been speculation about their impending doom (you know, being a newspaper and all).  Especially with competition from bloggers, who can publish stories immediately and who can update their stories to be absolutely current as new facts come to light, where as, due to the printing and distribution process of newspapers, everything in newspapers is necessarily from the previous day.  Perhaps the traditional news industry could compete better if they just rebranded themselves as the recents.  The Star Tribune, one of our two major recentpapers.  That sounds about right.

But one of the things that has always struck me as a little odd since moving to the Twin Cities is that we have two major recentpapers here, the Star Tribune and the Pioneer Press.  It would seem that with the challenges that are facing the dead tree edition of the news, that it would make sense to combine these papers – half the writers / double the potential circulation for each.  It would seem like the smart business move.  I’m sure there are tons of reasons this hasn’t happened, and admittedly I’ve never really cared enough about ink on pulp action to really investigate why this is, but it does set my mind wondering, to the really important question facing the recents industry…

What would they name it if they combined the two?

Now obviously, they couldn’t just keep one name and let the other one die.  Too many hurt feelings that way, wasted name recognition, and it doesn’t really signal the new start they need.

No, they need a whole new identity, something that would really give them a presence that people would take note of.

The Star Press?

The Pioneer Tribune?

No, neither seems quite right, still pretty bland.  Maybe we could combine the names more…

The Stress?

No, though not bad.

The Piobune?

No, sounds like a new medication or a medical condition.

What about….

I’ve got it!!

The Pie-Star

Now that would put those pesky bloggers on notice.

Today the Iowa Supreme Court deemed a law limiting marriage to straight couples to be unconstitutional.  (Go Iowa!)  I’ll probably do a longer post on this soon, but for the moment, a bit about the news coverage.

I turned on CNN tonight, and figured they’d probably have something on about it.  I picked CNN because I don’t have cable, so it’s the only all news channel I have.  So, when I turned it on, they had a story about some shootings.  Okay, gruesome murder, tragic loss of life, you’re a news network, it’s what you do.  After a few minutes they had about a one minute bit between the host and some random correspondent live from some lawn somewhere, which basically consisted of:

“So, Chuck (not his real name, but I forget), I hear Iowa passed gay marriage today.  Is that so?”

“Yep.  And, for those of you who don’t know, Iowa’s in the Midwest.  It’s not on either of the coasts, and in fact doesn’t even touch any major body of water.”

“Fascinating stuff Chuck.  After this, Madonna’s attempt to adopt a second child from some country you’ve never heard of blocked by a judge there.  What do you think?”

That was it.  Maybe 30 seconds, followed by celebrity gossip.  “Okay,” I thought, “I’m sure there will be something on their website about it.”  So, I went to cnn.com and searched the front page.

Nothing.

Not one single link to a single story about it.

Now, if CNN’s front page was Google-like in its Spartan-ness, I could forgive that, but there’s a lot on there.  By my count, there are 94 links to specific stories on their front page right now, not counting broad categories (politics, entertainment, national, …) or regular shows (Larry King, Anderson Cooper, weather, …).  No, 94 specific stories about specific topics that were deemed worth putting on the front page of the website instead of gay marriage being legalized.

For comparison, MSNBC has a short (16 second) video clip on the front page right at the edge of the bottom of the screen when you first open it, and then a headline a few inches below that in fairly large type.  The clip is captioned “Iowa becomes first in Midwest to legalize gay”, and yes the formatting cuts it off right there. Sounds little more Fox News style that way. Speaking of which…

Fox News has a four large print headlines at the top, and the first headline below that is “Iowa Court Strikes Down Same-Sex Marriage Ban”.  Easily visible when the page loads.  It’s basically the fifth headline. Fairly prominent, and not as overly derisive as one would expect from Fox News. The article is actually reasonably balanced, not really the “In another step on the way to defining marriage as between a man and a box turtle” that I’ve come to expect from Fox. (Okay, it wasn’t Fox, but you had to check didn’t you?)

So, what are some of those 94 stories CNN deems more important than this fairly major civil rights ruling?  Let’s take a look:

• Ticker: Mrs. Obama makes fashion faux pas?
• Judge denies Vick’s bankruptcy plan
• Gang of villagers chases away Google car (that one’s actually listed in 2 places, so it’s 2 of the 94 stories that are more important than legalizing gay marriage)
• Guy coughs up rusty, 30-year-old nail (with video)
• Strangers dress guy suitably for his job (with video)
• Teen knits duct-tape prom dress (with video)
• iReport.com: 1,052 Waldos smash world record
• Review: A great time in ‘Adventureland’
• ‘Idol’ Megan Joy talks about being voted off
• From ‘Sex’ to ‘Rings,’ film tours excite fans
• Two new reasons to worry about insomnia (hope that one doesn’t keep you up at night!  Oh, see what I did there, cause, … ah, yeah…)
• 9 bold MLB predictions for the ’09 season
• Prolific NFL QBs who went to new teams
• Local bank makes good
• Charged twice for my Cayman Islands hotel

Quick quiz – how many of those did I actually take from The Onion rather than CNN?  Unfortunately, none.

CNN, please turn in your journalistic integrity badge and company coffee mug at the front desk.  Here’s a box for your things.