Who was guarding the public interest during the $1B boondoggle stadium giveaway to a billionaire? Columnists? Commentators? Talk show hosts? Editorial pages? No one? In The Sherlock Holmes story The Silver Blaze, Holmes solves the mystery when he realizes that a dog that should have barked at an intruder did NOT bark because the “intruder” was familiar:...

    @stribgillespie: Highly placed sources say Zygi Wilf has downloaded a certain Randy Newman hit. That Tweet from the StarTribune’s Editorial Page Editor, Scott Gillespie, hit Twitter on April 20, a few days after the vote by a Legislative committee NOT to let the $1 billion boondoggle of a plan for a new Minnesota Vikings stadium go to the floor of...

UPDATED: Example: KSTP-TV distorted stadium poll findings. Did Twin Cities journalism outlets take a dive during the debate over the $1B Vikings stadium proposal? Help crowd-source my effort to remember the worst moments, most-naked conflicts of interest and most-egregious omissions. Maybe there were even noteworthy exceptions when mainstream media outlets...

After Thursday’s passage of the Vikings stadium giveaway, the Governor of Minnesota used the kind of language usually reserved for wounded or dead soldiers to heap praise on Zygi and Mark Wilf, the billionaire, New Jersey-based owners of an NFL franchise that was worth an estimated $800 million last week but probably far more than $1 billion now: “Last...

                                                         “(We) want to respect the business privacy of the Vikings.”                                — Minnesota State Senate Majority Leader Dave Senjem. Room 400 North in the State Office Building was a busy place...

The final contingents of Minnesota Army National Guard troops deployed to the Iraq war zone returned to their home state last weekend. There were seven separate return ceremonies, with troops who had been in Kuwait for a year coming home to  Bloomington and Anoka (each city hosted two welcome home ceremonies), as well as to New Ulm, Luverne and Jackson. It was a...

As a young attorney, Abraham Lincoln once was challenged by a courtroom foe to ask him a question — any question — that couldn’t be answered by a simple “Yes,” or “No.” “Have you stopped beating your wife,” Lincoln replied. The question couldn’t be answered and didn’t need an answer; it was meant as a...

There are a number of deeply disturbing things about Monday night’s murder of a 22-year-old Good Samaritan who was delivering dinner to a needy family in North Minneapolis: The least important is that it makes an awkward occasion for Mayor R.T. Rybak, who plans to deliver his annual State of the City address in North Minneapolis today. Rybak has been too busy...

A  mystery popped up last week, one that serves as a metaphor for the difficulty Minnesota faces — in this 150th anniversary year — in acknowledging the Dakota War of 1862 and its aftermath of racism, retribution and white triumphalism. A large monument that noted the spot along the Minnesota River where 38 Dakota warriors were hanged on the day after...

  Forty-four years ago yesterday, Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis, on April 4, 1968. Three days later, a planeload of the whitest boys in America — and some of the most ignorant — landed in Washington, D.C. to begin an exciting senior class trip to Our Nation’s Capital and then, by bus, to New York City, where I would lose a...

Without firing a shot, the Board of Hennepin County Commissioners has surrendered to the wingnuts in the Minnesota Republican Tea Party, and to Bully Boy Tom Emmer, the right-wing standard bearer who was the 2010 candidate for governor of the Target Corporation. Emmer came within 9,000-or-so votes of winning, but has been relegated since the election to braying into...

  Michael Brodkorb — the unlikely Lothario of that hotbed of love and loins known as the Minnesota State Capitol — is threatening to blow the socks off the GOP Senate majority caucus with a lawsuit challenging his firing for fornicating with a superior. Brodkorb was fired by the Mullahs of the GOP in December after a subaltern reported him for...

I was enjoying a nice dark roast on the bench behind Cafe Bene in St Paul when I noticed that the guy loading large boxes of coffee onto a two-wheeled dolly and rolling them into the coffee shop was older than most delivery guys you see. Way older. His name was John Dotray, a “retired” machinist who used to make airplane parts and now delivers coffee...

This item, republished here, first appeared on my blog a year ago, March 9, 2011. If anything, it is even more timely today, as Minnesota’s leading news outlet stands to hit the jackpot with a Vikings Stadium deal that it has relentlessly promoted. Ask yourself if it is even possible today for journalists to criticize their bosses, and their companies, in...