Upstarts Drive Hack Over The Edge

Nick Coleman vs. the Power Liners.

No contest.

Hindrocket, Big Trunk, and Deacon sure have a lot of nerve: they have opinions and express them to a wide audience; they provide facts & opinions that mainstream media somehow doesn't find room for; they provide a forum for experts of various kinds that don't get an outlet in MM, either; and, perhaps most to the point, they get national recognition for their efforts and successes.

Damn those bastards to hell!

Oops. Sorry. Slipped into mainstream-media mode for a moment. Forgive me.

As you may already know, Faithful Reader, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune has gone out of its way, again, to heap shame upon itself. Unsatisfied, I guess, with the disgraceful performance of one Jim Boyd last summer, the newspaper decided to disgrace itself again with a year-end column by one Nick Coleman (below).

The Evanglical Outpost takes a good look at the fracas, Dec. 30 (brackets in original):

“If people like [John] Kerry, [Howell] Raines, [Dan] Rather, and [Trent] Lott can be humbled by the blogosphere,” Hugh Hewitt writes in the introduction of his new book, Blog, “so, too, can you, your company, your movie, your church, your anything.” Anyone who doubts Hewitt’s claim should just ask Nick Coleman, columnist for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune and the latest media figure to be “humbled” by bloggers.

But what sets Coleman apart from the infamous “gang of four” is the fact that until today, few people outside of Minnesota had ever heard of him. While most of the infamous opinion storms of the blogosphere have focused on high-profile targets, the Minneapolis columnist was – until today – relatively unknown outside of his geographic area. His example provides both a cautionary tale and a case study for how brands can be destroyed in the new media era....

Blogger Mitch Berg points out, Dec. 29, the considerable irony of Coleman's hissy fit:

.... Does the Strib cover the news fairly? Frequently, yes. Individual reporters, and the newsroom in general, usually do cover the nuts and bolts of the political conventions, car crashes, stamp shows, tsunamis and all the other events, large and small, that they choose to call "news" every day.

But Nick Coleman, Lori Sturdevant, the Strib's editorial board don't "report". They opine.

They have a big, unopposed platform — the Strib's editorial pages and A-section — on which to present their opinions. They have a few editors to perform, one suspects, some basic fact-checking on their opinions (although it's often not enough), and then, poof, it gets published. After it's published, the public can respond; they can write a letter to the editor (which, if it's a conservative, will probably only get published if it makes conservatives sound stupid), or send an email or phone call to the columnist (which will earn you one of their snarling email retorts or a rambling, incoherent voice-mail response and not much more).

In short, Nick Coleman is a blogger....

Evan Coyne Maloney shows, Dec. 29, that Coleman really didn't know when to quit (italics and brackets in original):

.... Coleman also lets slip something that tells us quite a bit about the mentality of today's press:

Powerline is the biggest link in a daisy chain of right-wing blogs that is assaulting the Mainstream Media while they toot their horns in the service of ... what? The downtrodden? No, that was yesterday's idea of the purpose of journalism.

That's funny; I always thought the purpose of journalism was to describe noteworthy events, to tell what happened. No, in Coleman's world, the purpose of the media is to "toot their horns in the service of [...] the downtrodden." Of course, they get to decide who's downtrodden, they get to decide how the downtrodden should be served — it always seems to be through the election of liberals or the support of big government programs — and they get to decide what facts to leave out and what details to spin in order to further their goals. Gotta give Coleman credit for honesty, but I bet he wishes he could take back that bit of candor, because it proves that he's a "journalist" with an agenda — and that he thinks the rest of the media shares this agenda....

Fraters Libertas had the goods on Coleman a long time ago:

.... Regarding wealth, I'm sure Nick Coleman and Laura Billings are well into the six figures with their combined salaries from the newspapers (your subscription dollars at work, folks). Given his tenure, I imagine Nick's got to be getting close to $100K all on his own. Am I to understand, he doesn't consider that to be wealthy?

Regarding being born into privilege, Nick Coleman's father was among the most powerful men in the state [Minnesota], including four terms as Senate Majority Leader, from 1973 to 1981. His step mother, Deborah Howell, worked at the Minneapolis Star from 1965 to 1979, rising to the post of City Editor. In 1973, Nick was given a job as city hall reporter, for the Minneapolis Star. In 1979, Deborah Howell moved to the Pioneer Press serving as Managing Editor, then Executive Editor, until 1990. In 1986, stepson Nick was given a columnist position, at, guess what, the St. Paul Pioneer Press.

And he's claiming not to have been a beneficiary of privilege? His chosen profession straddles the realms of his (step)parental spheres of influence — politics and journalism. His employment history follows in lock step coordination with that of his stepmother. Would he like us to believe his career trajectory in this town is based exclusively on his talent (cough cough) and not the doors opened to him because of his familial connections?...

Jim Geraghty, over at the due-for-a-name-change Kerry Spot, sums it up quite well, Dec. 29:

.... Does anybody at the Star-Tribune think this column came across as petty, small, nasty, immature, snide, arrogant, and/or all-of-the-above? (Besides, one suspects, Lileks?) Is Coleman’s column space really attracting and interesting readers of that paper, or is it turning into his personal platform to mock and deride his critics in a manner that they can’t respond accordingly? It's not like either Powerline guy gets a column running opposite Coleman's.

I'm not a huge fan of boxing, but I remember when Mike Tyson bit off Evander Holyfield's ear. It was the moment that Tyson’s days as a serious boxer were over, and he was revealed as more of a wild animal than a professional athlete — he couldn’t compete with Holyfield under the rules of the game, so he turned to a nastier, darker, more brutal route.

Coleman has taken on the Powerline guys in the past, and apparently come up short. So he’s going for their ear instead....

Here is Nick Coleman's column, Dec. 29.

Now let me get a new hatchet.

These guys pretend to be family watchdogs but they are Rottweilers in sheep's clothing. They attack the Mainstream Media for not being fair while pursuing a right-wing agenda cooked up in conservative think tanks funded by millionaire power brokers.

They should call themselves "Powertool." They don't speak truth to power. They just speak for power.

The lads behind Powerline are a bank vice president named Scott Johnson and a lawyer named John Hinderaker. If you read Powerline, you know them better by their fantasy names, Big Trunk (that's Johnson) and Hind Rocket (Hinderaker). I will leave it to the appropriate professionals to determine what they are compensating for, but they have received enormous attention from the despised Mainstream Media and deserve more.

I wish I didn't have to do it, because I already get ripped a lot on the site, which thankfully also has had some nice photos of bikini-clad candidates for Miss Universe to keep me company. But I accept Powerline's contempt; I am only a Mainstream Media man, while Big Trunk and Hind Rocket are way cool. They blog.

I work for a dopey old newspaper committed to covering the news fairly while Powerline doesn't make boring commitments. They are not Mainstream Media. They are Extreme Media. Call them reliable partisan hacks.

That's what they call me: A reliable partisan hack, even though they sometimes like columns I write about dumb things Democrats do. I have criticized many dumb Democrats, but Democrats don't matter these days. All the power is in the hands of Republicans, and Powerline's job is to make life easier for them. Mine isn't.

A story: In 1990, I reported that this newspaper's endorsement of DFL Gov. Rudy Perpich was decided by then-publisher and Perpich crony Roger Parkinson. He had quashed the decision of the newspaper's editorial board, which had voted in favor of the Republican challenger, Arne Carlson.

The truth got out, the Republican won and the public was served. If Extreme bloggers, who know nothing that happened before last Tuesday, had the same commitment to serving the public, I wouldn't have a problem. But like talk radio, they are dominated by the right and are only interested in being a megaphone without oversight, disclosure of conflicts of interest, or professional standards.

Powerline is run by Ivy League lawyers, one of whom (Johnson) is a vice president at TCF Bank in Minneapolis and works for Bill Cooper, an ex-state Republican Party chairman. Johnson and Hinderaker are fellows at the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank that seems to be obsessed with gays and guns and wants to return us to the principles of our founders, although I can't determine if that includes Ben Franklin's skirt chasing.

Mainstream or Extreme? We report, you decide: Last month, Claremont gave its Winston Churchill Award to that visionary statesman and recovering drug addict, Rush Limbaugh!

Time magazine's "Blog of the Year" is not run by Boy Scouts. It is the spear of a campaign aimed at making Minnesota into a state most of us won't recognize. Unless you came from Alabama with a keyboard on your knee.

My ancestors came here as Irish sod busters in the 1850s, and they would be spinning beneath that sod if they saw powerful people trying to tear down what they built. But they'd enjoy how the Extreme works now: How it hammers all its opponents in the Mainstream as limousine liberals.

I keep wishing the Ivy League boys had told me I was rich before I took my first job cleaning bathrooms in a factory at night, or my next job driving a school bus, or my first newspaper job at the old Tribune for $147 a week.

But Extreme bloggers don't tell truths. They tell talking points. Powerline is the biggest link in a daisy chain of right-wing blogs that is assaulting the Mainstream Media while they toot their horns in the service of ... what? The downtrodden? No, that was yesterday's idea of the purpose of journalism. Extreme bloggers are so hip and cool they can make fun of the poor and the disadvantaged while working out of paneled bank offices.

But enough. It's time for auld acquaintance to be forgot. So as a gift to Powerline, let me try my hand at some blogger-style "fact-checking."

1) "It's totally unexpected," Johnson, the banker, told the newspaper after Powerline won "Blog of the Year."

But the Aw Shucks Act doesn't fly. Powerline campaigned shamelessly for awards, winning an online "Best Blog of 2004" a week before the Time honor. That online award was a bloggers' poll, and Powerline linked its readers to the award site 10 times during the balloting, shilling for votes.

2) "We keep it very much separate from our day jobs," said Hinderaker, meaning the boys don't blog at work.

But they do. Johnson recently had time at his bank job to post a despicable item sliming Sen. Mark Dayton. If I had the money they think I do, I'd put it all in TCF. Then I'd pull it out.

3) Powerline sells thousands of dollars in ads, including one for T-shirts that say, "Hung Like a Republican."

But does Powerline or its mighty righty allies take money from political parties, campaigns or well-heeled benefactors who hope to affect Minnesota's politics from behind the scenes? We don't know, and they don't have to say. They are not Mainstream.

They are Extreme.

The Blog from the Core asserts Fair Use for non-commercial, non-profit educational purposes.

P.S. See also Mainstream Meltdown.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Mon. 01/03/05 07:59:38 AM
Categorized as Blogosphere Stuff & Media.