Minnesota Public Radio's Tom Scheck got the scoop Monday about Gov. Tim Pawlenty delivering a $100,000 check from an unnamed donor to the Alabama Republican party, but the Star Tribune's Rachel Stassen-Berger put a point on it when the identity was revealed Tuesday: "Pawlenty plays bagman for Bob Parry."

You don't usually read 'em that tart outside of the partisan blogs. In fact, the Day One headline on Stribber Pat Doyle's post was far blander: "Pawlenty shuttles contribution to Alabama GOP."

Stassen-Berger's story comes on the same day the Strib chronicled the state GOP's rising hopes; I'm pretty sure the Republicans who leaped to link to that one this morning will resume criticizing the Red Star now.

Meanwhile, MPR's Bob Collins channels the criticism of ex-Congressman Tim Penny, who says Minnesota media have been too soft on Travelin' Timmy. (Worth noting: Penny was the 2002 Independence Party candidate TPaw beat.)

Penny complains that the media "seem to write only glowingly about Pawlenty's trips." I don't think that's right — there's been obsessive coverage, though not all glowing — but after Stassen-Berger's post, it's a harder argument to make.

Frank N. Magid died Friday. To say the 78-year-old Iowa consultant influenced TV news would be an understatement. By all accounts, he brought research to the medium, birthed “Action News” (according to his fans), “Happy Talk” (according to his detractors), morning newscasts, and, oh yeah, made sure Walter Cronkite anchored solo.

But locally, Magid was best known in media circles as KSTP patriarch Stanley S. Hubbard's close personal friend. For the past quarter-century, KSTP’s late news has been an also-ran to KARE and WCCO; as news directors and anchor teams cycled through the operation, Magid’s influence — or so the muttering goes, meddling — is cited for holding Channel 5 down.  

On the occasion of Magid’s passing, I decided to call up Hubbard, always a good and tart interview, to ask point-blank about the criticism.

“It’s unfair,” Hubbard replied. “We never went wrong because of anything Magid recommended. The reason [for KSTP’s poor showing] — and it just drove Frank nuts — is that we weren’t doing what the research recommended. There’s a lot of turnover in management, a lot of ego in the news business.”

Former news directors, station execs and staffers are now banging their heads against their desks.

Hubbard struck a populist tone: “You find out what the people say — not what Magid says, but what do the people think? Peter Jennings used to hate Frank Magid — oh, did he hate Frank Magid! — but nobody likes to hear they’re not popular, they’re not catching on. Some people work in some places, some people don’t.”

It’s probably worth noting that Jennings, before his untimely 2005 death, was pretty popular. Then again, his newscasts included the health, consumer and lifestyle stories Magid championed.

Surely, I asked, Magid bears some responsibility for KSTP’s revolving door of forgettable male anchors — guys like Randall Carlisle, Kent Ninomiya, Chris Conangla, who were sandwiched around solid newsmen but bland personalities such as Stan Turner and John Mason?

As for the neutrality of research, one anchor with possible long-term potential, Randy Meier, was famously not a Magid fave despite testing better than replacements; Meier’s partner and future star Julie Nelson left for top-rated KARE a year later. No team, recently anyway, has been allowed the four or five years needed to turn a station’s fortunes around.

“That’s baloney,” Hubbard replied. “You either catch on or you don’t.”

Hubbard noted that Magid advised other company-owned stations in Albuquerque; Albany and Rochester, New York; and Duluth and Rochester, Minnesota, “and all are never lower than number two. This is just a very tough, very competitive market.”

It's worth noting that KSTP News fares well in the mornings, where newscasts have been in first or second place in the prime 25-to-54-year-old demographic. By the way, Hubbard’s son Rob is now in charge of the TV station, and Magid’s son Brent runs the 200-employee Frank Magid Associates — now based in Minneapolis.

Although Frank Magid retired from his firm in 2002, Hubbard says that as recently as a month and a half ago, Rob was sending the elder researcher “pictures, billboards, what the show looks like” for feedback.

Stanley Hubbard’s bond with Magid began in 1970. “There were no other viable research firms in broadcasting. My dad was still here, he was getting a little older, almost 80, and needed convincing. But Frank was right — boy was he right!”

Magid’s name had been made via the breathless, high-story-count “Action News” format, which catapulted an obscure Philadelphia station, WPVI, to first place; it remained for three decades (with the same male anchor). KSTP adopted its version, “Eyewitness News,” in 1973; with Magid's strong push, the format found its star, Ron Magers, in 1974. The result: first place.

However, when Magers left for Chicago in 1981, KSTP began its descent, which accelerated when Gannett acquired KARE (then WTCN) and grabbed the NBC affiliation Hubbard dropped. Hubbard says Magid was “not a huge factor” in KSTP’s switch to ABC, which had the better entertainment programming at the time.

These days, KSTP — which in recent years emphasized “more news” — retains the "Action News" DNA. I’ve spoken with media pros who judge the relatively sensationalist format a loser in this better-educated market, especially with Fox9 as a new, aggressive player. Then again, while we’re not in an anchors-don’t-matter world, icons have left (Paul Magers) or are departing (Don Shelby), and KSTP’s disadvantages may dwindle.

Stanley Hubbard didn’t make the Broadcasting Hall of Fame by running a third-place news operation; he also started the first independent satellite newsgathering operation, Conus Communications, and US Satellite Broadcasting (now DirectTV). He says Magid was integral to those massive successes; the researcher would accompany Hubbard on worldwide fundraising trips, his data reassuring skittish investors.

“He died so suddenly,” Hubbard laments. “He had some rare kind of lymphoma. We lost a great American. He was genius, number one, but he was also a man of integrity — he never lied, never cheated, he was honest. You could debate with him, and might not agree, but he was the sort of person who would come back and tell you that you were right.”

That didn’t stop Magid from tweaking his famously stubborn buddy. “Last summer, he called me. We have a ranch in New Mexico, and he said, ‘I’m sending you a gift, but you’ve got to agree not to change his name," Hubbard says with a chuckle. "It turned out to be a mule, and he named it ‘Mr. Stanley.’”

Wrote about this last week; thought you'd like to see it. 

Paid for by current and former newsroom troops, the ad ran on page A5 of my Strib this morning. It only includes names of newsroom staffers who gave permission.

The ad notes 1,000 of 2,000 Strib employees have lost their jobs since January 2007; staggering.

Fox9's headline on its Super Bowl ratings story: "Superbowl TV Ratings Not So Super in the Twin Cities"

The Star Tribune's headline on its Super Bowl ratings story: "Super Bowl ratings up in Twin Cities"

Guess which outlet competes directly with WCCO, the station that broadcast this year's game?

While Fox9 makes the point that the Super Bowl ratings here weren't as good as for the NFC Championship game (which, by the way, was broadcast on Fox9), the Strib notes the Minneapolis-St. Paul market finished 15th of 50-plus metered U.S. locales. Both facts are true. However, given that our 51-rating, 75-percent share was only about 10 percent lower than top-ranked New Orleans' 56.3/82, I'd say the Strib's take is lot closer to the mark, and local fans clearly overcame their disappointments to tune in.

Startribune.com, which last year topped a billion page views, racked up 103 million in January, its highest total ever, according to a company release.

The "paper" also broke out other January results, all monthly records:

• Mobile: 3.5 million page views
• Videos: 700,000 page views
• Vita.mn: 500,000 page views 

The company acknowledges that the Vikings' playoff chase boosted traffic (though they still haven't released pay wall numbers for Access Vikings). Of course, the Vikes were hot in the fourth quarter of '09, too, when the Strib averaged 91 million monthly page views. The release takes pains to note gains across subject areas; overall, traffic was up 9 percent from the previous January, as measured by the web service Omniture.

Everyone knows mobile is the future, and the Strib's data shows that platform now accounts for about 3 percent of its web looks. The Strib's video push has skeptics inside and outside the shop; still, moving pictures generated about 20,000 views a day.

As for vita.mn, the free entertainment weekly's numbers compare to City Pages, which in April reported 2.5 million monthly page views for its entire news-entertainment-listings site, including 179,000 for its music blog.

Note: Part 1 here.

One of the pleasures of being Tommy Mischke's Boswell is that the guy gives you the sort of honest, expansive answers you feel like giving him when you're on his show. We hardy fans know him as the craisin in a bowl of radio tapioca; a muser, a poet, a bard amid the mundane, predictable and pre-programmed.

Which brings us to the speculation he might have given up his City Pages webcast Thursday to return to the local airwaves. The two possibilities seem to be WCCO-AM and perhaps its vacant 1-3 p.m. slot, or a return to AM1500, which ejected Mischke a year ago but has struggled mightily since.

"Both of them came to me a couple months back," Mischke acknowledges. "Steve Konrad, the program director at KSTP, asked me if I'd have any interest in rebroadcasting my City Pages show late night at KSTP. He asked me to think about ways we could do some kind of City Pages/KSTP shared thing together.

"WCCO had me over to their offices in late November to meet a regional operations director who was a CBS guy from out of state and didn't know me from Adam. The GM and [program director] at WCCO made it clear they wanted me, but the CBS guy didn't know anything about my work over the years and it was clear I was going to have to pretty much impress him all over again.

"Anyway, as 'CCO began to meet with me more often KSTP seemed to become less interested, and by late January, Steve Konrad was saying that KSTP was going to be going in a different direction. 

"Meanwhile at WCCO, I've now learned the same lesson I learned over the last year at City Pages: You can have the nicest people in the world in management rooting for you and trying to help you out, but the big corporation guys call the shots and they're out of state and using a whole different set of criteria to make their decisions.

"I like the General Manager and the Program Director at 'CCO, but it's become clear that the folks who own this radio station move slowly and consequently there is no offer, nor talk of a time slot, at this time.

"I think one of the things going on over there is that a big union contract negotiation is coming up this late winter or early spring and I have a feeling a lots riding on that. But what do I know about unions? I'm a 17-year veteran of a famously non-union operation over on University Avenue."

I asked Mischke what giving up his year-long experiment with web radio says about the format's potential — or lack thereof — compared his traditional radio. He was unsparing.

"This is my take on web radio: I wasn't any good at it. If you checked into who was listening to a particular program during the last month you might have found 3,500 people checking it out, which is 3,500 more than should have been," he lamented. "I'm getting old and maybe I don't have what I used to, I don't know. But I thought my programs were absolute crap."

Whoa. Sure that's not the final-show endorphin depletion talking?

"My work at KSTP had two things going for it that this gig never had. Number one, a live news person was available to me to interact with, and a live producer as well. They were right there beside me and gave me a point of reference for directing some of my material. They didn't always need to respond, but they gave me a sense of the "live" feel of the show. They were always great foils," he explained.

"The second thing was phone calls. My show at City Pages became something people downloaded after the fact. They'd come home from work, download it, and listen while they walked the dog, or download it and listen as they went to bed. Ninety percent of the listeners never listened live. One guy told me he down-loaded 15 hours worth of programs and drove to Florida, listening all the way. That's fine, but not one of those folks were able to call me. My show was already over at that point.

"Losing the spontaneous interaction with the random caller, the lone quirky guy calling in on his cell phone, that was a crippling blow. My fondest memories in radio were the people who came out of the woodwork, the eccentric, iconoclasts who'd call out of the blue and turn a mundane program into something memorable. At City Pages, I never learned how to effectively make up for what was lost there. I turned to the City Pages staff and rotated them through with various interviews, but I was using them as a crutch I'm afraid and not doing enough of my own heavy lifting."

Despite that garment-rending, I know from talking to Tommy over the year that he's in love with his weekly City Pages column. That feature was part of the original web-print deal where Mischke brought several advertisers and essentially covered CP's costs — meet the new entrepreneurial journalist. I wanted to know how a revised deal would be structured.

"The joy of my year at City Pages has been writing and hanging out with a pretty cool group of people who welcomed
me warmly, and who I now consider friends," he began. "Nothing is changing there. I get to stay on as a weekly columnist. Mark Moeller of RF Moeller Jeweler, who has been about as loyal to me as any brother could ever be, will buy the half page next to my column and be the lone sponsor."

Managed to grab Tommy Mischke after his final City Pages webcast Thursday. The exit — which, as noted earlier, does not mean he's giving up his alt-weekly column — was a bit of a surprise; Mischke says he didn't decide today was plug-pulling day until 1 p.m.

Still, the exit had been in the cards for weeks. "I knew at the start of the New Year I didn't want to sign any new one-year advertising contracts with clients because I knew I wanted to try something new," he says. "As soon as you alert your advertisers to the fact that you're looking around for some new endeavor, it sort of sends the signal that there's no point in them getting involved in any new advertising deals. In this business you either commit or get out."

What will he be doing now? Surprisingly, the options don't involve a return to radio, and both sound pretty cool.

"I'm pursuing two things right now that are taking up a lot of time and I'm happy to be free now to work on them. One is a TV show. A local producer who probably doesn't want me talking about this has come to me with a show idea and we've shot a pilot and it's being pitched out west this month by his agent," Mischke says. "Needless to say this falls under the heading of a serious crap shoot, but what the hell. It's as much fun working on this as radio was that very first year, when I didn't know what on earth I was doing and couldn't believe I was being allowed to do it.

"The second thing stems from a call I received from the Mayor's office in Saint Paul. They brought me over to the Turf Club last month for a couple of beers to talk about the possibility of me putting together some sort of regular live music and theater production in St Paul. At the Mayor's office, they have a pretty serious desire to push the performing arts in my home town, and wanted to know if I'd be willing to take the lead in putting something together. I kind of like the challenge — though again, I have no idea what the hell I'm doing."

With that, he had to scamper off to pick up his son from school, but when he gets back, we'll talk WCCO speculation, and what his year-plus experience says about web radio versus traditional radio.

Just tweeted from the @citypages account:

Listen to Mischke's last day of "In the Stream" live here: http://bit.ly/1YywTx

Do I know what's up? Not at the moment. This will add fuel to the speculation that WCCO-AM and Mischke might partner up, but I have no confirmation of anything. Hope he keeps the column. [Update: He is.]

[Update #2: Listener Ben Clark tweets: "Mischke will continue his column in City Pages and pursue unknown other endeavors, possibly including television but 'In the Stream' is done." A knowledgeable person not authorized to talk told me, "He's not going anywhere at the moment, just taking a break from radio in general."]

You can download the mp3 later Thursday afternoon.

Talk about feeding the hand that bites you: Current and former Star Tribune newsroom workers will buy an ad next week in their paper recognizing not only the 26 workers management is purging in a reorganization plan, but the estimated 140 laid off or bought out since January 2007.

The slightly bigger-than-quarter-page ad, scheduled to appear Tuesday, is arts writer Mary Abbe’s brainchild. Researcher/reporter Jane Friedmann, business reporter Dee DePass and health team editor Dave Hage helped compile names, arrange financing and get publisher Mike Klingensmith’s approval.

Despite the painful circumstances, Friedmann says the ad is meant as a public tribute, not a print protest. The list of names includes only Stribbers who have given their permission; 92 have said yes. Organizers were able to get a 50-percent-off early-week rate, allowing them to enlarge the $3,225, three-column ad to fit in all the fallen.

At its peak, the Strib newsroom employed more than 400; after the cuts, the count is closer to the mid-200s. Some of the 26 workers are still on the job, but almost all will be out by Feb. 11.

Surviving staffers are donating despite taking a pay cut in last year’s bankruptcy, and ex-staffers are giving despite bigger financial hits.

“It does feel a little strange paying the Star Tribune for an ad honoring people whose income they have truncated,” Friedmann acknowledges. “While I strongly disagree with letting this recent group of professionals go, I wish the company well. A little addition to the company's bottom line doesn't produce too much cognitive dissonance for me. After all, I'll get a tiny bit of that ad revenue back in my paycheck some day.”

When I was doing talk radio, I realized pretty quickly the odds were stacked against me because I just couldn't pull off the whole omniscience thing. I couldn't construct a fantasy universe where my beliefs were always right, and — my talent being what it is — there were plenty of opportunities to admit when I was wrong.

Those gray areas drove me back to my first love, writing, where somehow I now spend a lot of my time vetting the foibles of others in my profession. There are times, when pontificating, that I feel like I'm drifting nauseatingly toward the sort of talk radio certainty I hate. However — my talent being what it is — I make enough mistakes to forever disabuse me of being master of anything.

This is all a flesh-rending setup to say I am a huge fan of other journalists who display the guts and grace to openly reflect on their missteps. Yesterday, I had some fun with local sports guys who took the hook on some bad info about Cretin-Derham Hall lineman Seantrel Henderson's college choice. It was the second time in a week that single-source info had gotten the local media into trouble, so it was irresistible. Plus, it's spurred a great discussion of Twitter as a rough draft — or more — of journalism.

Thursday morning, the Star Tribune's Michael Rand, the editor who set off the goose chase on the Minneapolis side of the river, posts a recap, with regrets, of how his decision-making went down. I won't distill it; just read it. But it is a model of openness, and honesty.

The web's non-stop news cycle gives all of us more chances to make mistakes. But it also gives us more opportunity to disclose, and discuss, and reconsider. None of us are omniscient, but we're human, and we're far more likely to trust those who admit it.