News day – January 8

Downsizing the news, again and again and again. David Brauer has the full list of buyouts at the Strib, including columnist Kathy Kersten and online managing editor Will Tacy. Brauer reported earlier that the Strib has proposed paycuts of up to 42 percent for some Teamsters union workers. Cuts hit both WCCO and City Pages last week, and the Strib has followed the PiPress in combining both A and B sections in the Monday paper, with Business and Classifieds in a single section Monday-Thursday. (The PiPress combines both sections on Monday and Tuesday, and the Strib says its move is only a “test” during January. Right.) And the Minnesota Daily is cutting costs by going down to four issues each week when it resumes publication with the new term in January, and paying reporters per-story rather than per-hour, according to the Strib.

Journalism, with feeling. For old-style reporting in the teeth of danger, Palestinian journalists in Gaza are offering a couple of inspiring examples. JTA, the Jewish Telegraph calls AP writer Ibrahim Barzak, “the best reporter in Gaza,” describing his work in better days:

He is an assiduous, just the facts reporter. He never raises his voice and always asks the tough questions. He has risked his life more than once for his job, and more than once for pissing off the Palestinian powers that be.

Barzak begins his own account of reporting in Gaza this week:

I live alone in my office. My wife and two young children moved in with her father after our apartment was shattered. The neighborhood mosque, where I have prayed since I was a child, had its roof blown off. All the government buildings on my beat have been obliterated.
After days of Israeli shelling, the city and life I have known no longer exist.

I heard another moving interview with a Palestinian journalist Rami Al Meghari on KFAI radio Tuesday, from Pacifica’s Free Speech Radio News program. The podcast explores ” between his pull to ‘get the story’ as a journalist and his constant fear for his family and children.”

RNC? Which RNC? As Twitter follows the RNC (Republican National Commitee) chair candidates (Schmelzer: “Listening to RNC chair candidates speak. One guy: “It’s tough being a Young Republican.” Then glee answering how many guns each owns.”), the aftermath of St. Paul’s RNC drags on. Yesterday, the Strib reported that St. Paul and the Coalition to March on the RNC and Stop the War agreed to dismiss any claims against each other in federal court. Not sure what complaints the city had against the group, which staged the biggest march of the convention, staying within the lines on September 1, but the Coalition gave up its challenge to the city rules that kept them out of sight and hearing of all convention delegates. No legal protests were allowed to approach the RNC, except on the closed back side of the Xcel Center, and safely separated by a well-patrolled dead zone and tall double fences, leaving protesters free to shout slogans to one another.

The PiPress reported that police videos of St. Paul streets during the RNC are now available for public viewing–at least if “public” means filing legal demands under the Minnesota Data Practices Act, waiting for police permission, and then waiting your turn at the single video terminal available at the Western District police station.

Best/Worst Bush Moments Both local blogger Jeff Fecke and the august BBC offer lists of the “best” Bush moments. While Fecke’s Blog of the Moderate left includes some serious moments (Worst Bush Moments: #14, The Alito Appointment), the BBC article sticks to the silly side, noting that the “word ‘Bushism’ has been coined to label his occasional verbal lapses.” BBC offers video of some of the greatest moments, as well as several categories of quotations. Perhaps we should all be glad that, in the words of GWII, “I’ll be long gone before some smart person ever figures out what happened inside this Oval Office.” (5/12/08)

From the east and west side of the river St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman announced January 7 that he is running for re-election. As the incumbent Democratic mayor of a Democratic city with a 100% Democratic City Council, his chances for re-election look good.