The Star Tribune has just announced its new columnists; news reporter Jon Tevlin and Variety section writer Gail Rosenblum. They'll start in a couple of weeks, replacing Nick Coleman, who's being reassigned, and Katherine Kersten, who took the buyout last month.

Tevlin is an old friend and I'm pretty psyched about his selection. An alt-weekly veteran, he's one of the Strib's best hard-news writers, a longtime local digger who knows the haunts and the backstories. He has, shall we say, a certain lust for the juicy stuff; lately, he's been banging on suburban doors to chart the ripples of the Tom Petters scandal, and has probed the financial doings of megapastor Mac Hammond.

But it's not all Lifestyles of the Rich and Duplicitous: he's got a superb touch with regular folks, as evidenced by this early piece on the nerve-deadened Austin workers exposed to aerosolized pig brains.

Tevlin is no shrinking violet, and no political eunuch, so folks worried that Strib columns will be attenuated that way probably have little to fear. If he speaks his mind, the Kersten crowd will get little satisfaction, but he's a champion of the underdog and a mocker of the arrogant more than a partisan hack.

I don't know Rosenblum at all, and those worried about soft, fluffy defanged columns can easily mock someone who now holds down the "relationships" beat. (Last two assignments: breast feeding in public and the state of the sex business; let's just say the treatment wasn't very Kersten-like.) I'll bet there are metro-section applicants who are pissed someone was plucked from a softer section.

Still, Rosenblum, too, is one of the Strib's better prose stylists, and has tackled tougher subjects like the scars of military families. I also detect an undercurrent of wicked fun, so I'm inclined to give her a chance to deploy those skills on a wider array of topics.