Best MSM Media Criticism of the Year

There's a downside and an upside to this post. On the pessimistic hand, the sale of the Star Tribune to the seductively-named Avista Capital Partners most likely means more divestment in local news reporting. Already this year, Twin Cities news staff cutbacks have been felt as one consequence of the recent sale of the St. Paul Pioneer Press.

The upshot is that Star Trib columnist Nick Coleman has written the most trenchant critique of media economics I've ever seen published in a mainstream news source. It's particularly rare because he mocks both the old and new owners of his own paper. While Coleman is a bit too nostalgic about the erstwhile patriarchal rule of McClatchy's founder, he pointedly describes the greedy grubbing for minute increases in profit margin that led to the sale of the Star Tribune, which had been McClatchy's "flagship" newspaper. He gets right to the heart of the newspaper business's suicidal short-term run for profits and the neoliberal ethos that makes this possible by suspending all value considerations aside from immediate profit.


Check Coleman's column out at: http://www.startribune.com/357/story/903516.html