News Day

On TV, they’re called infomercials, but in newspapers they look like news stories, with only fine print identifying them as ads. And they’re phony as a three-dollar bill or, in this case, phony as an “absolutely free” $2 bill, an “Amish” Heat Surge space heater, and an “armored safe.” Continue reading →

UPDATED 12/1/2011  November 30 was the deadline for reopening University Avenue, so I took my camera along for a ride from Emerald Street in Minneapolis to Hamline in St. Paul. Is it open? That depends on what “open” means. Continue reading →

Romenesko was the news-of-the-week for the journo in-crowd last week, and I probably missed my chance to grab my 15 seconds of re-Tweeted fame by waiting until now to write about it. Strangely, though, the reason I am late has a lot to do with what Romenesko did wrong. Continue reading →

After five years years, the Minnesota Independent will end its run on Friday. The Minnesota Independent was the first on-line news organization to win a Page One award from the Minnesota Society of Professional Journalists in 2007, and its coverage has continued to win awards since then. Like its parent organization, the American Independent News Network, MnIndy has offered a distinctly progressive journalistic voice. Continue reading →

In March, Jimmy John fired six workers involved in a unionization campaign for putting up posters (see below) that charged Jimmy Johns workers were pressured to work while sick. “Jimmy John’s workers don’t get paid sick days. Shoot, we can’t even call in sick,” said the poster, which urged people to “Help Jimmy John’s workers win sick days” by calling the owner. On November 9, the National Labor Relations Board issued a complaint charging that Jimmy John’s “unlawfully disciplined, threatened, and ultimately terminated” the workers because of their union advocacy. Next step: a hearing before an administrative law judge in January. Continue reading →

About 40 people gathered at the Wells Fargo bank in West St. Paul November 5 in solidarity with the Occupy movement, which designated November 5 as Take Your Money Out Day. “We are indigenous, people of color, low-income, the ones most impacted by this greed,” said a press release from the Occupy Robert Street group led by Danza Mexica Cuauhtemoc. In contrast to the main Occupy events across the country, this group was mostly Latino and Native American. Continue reading →

Want to know where the rich people live? How much more it costs to rent in Highland Park than in Frogtown? Whether Minneapolis or St. Paul has a higher percentage of jobs in the finance and insurance sector? All that and more is in the neighborhood profiles put together by the Wilder Foundation using census data from the past two decades. Continue reading →

Occupy Oakland met the police this week, and the results were not pretty (see video above.) One of the Occupy protesters ended up in critical condition. He’s Scott Olson, a 24-year-old Iraqi war vet, and he was apparently hit in the head by a tear gas canister fired at him by police. Continue reading →

UPDATED 10/27/2011 — Drunken students with loud parties. Stick-in-the-mud old folks who want to have lights out at 10 p.m. Merriam Park and Mac-Groveland have seen the town versus gown conflict play out year after year. This year’s battleground is in City Hall, where a moratorium on the conversion of single-family homes to student housing is under consideration. Continue reading →