Scott Wente, a Minnesota Capitol reporter for Fargo-based Forum Communications, was laid off this week in a cost-cutting move, just days after the 2009 session ended. Forum editor Matt Von Pinnon confirmed the departure.

The layoff leaves Forum — which has 21 Minnesota papers and more state dailies any other publisher — with just one Capitol correspondent, Don Davis. Earlier this month, Forum eliminated its only North Dakota Capitol reporting position, citing cost pressures and that legislature's every-other-year schedule.

Wente arguably influenced this legislative session more than any other journalist, though not intentionally.

He was the reporter whom 2006 DFL gubernatorial candidate Mike Hatch called a "Republican whore" in that campaign's final days. After Lt. Gov. candidate Judi Dutcher flubbed a question about ethanol, Wente asked Hatch if his running mate understood the subject and why she wasn't available for an interview. Hatch's crude conflation of Forum's conservative leadership and Wente's legitimate questions rekindled doubts about the candidate's temperment, and he became the only statewide DFLer to lose that year.

Had Hatch not freaked out, we might be talking something other than unallotment and "no new taxes" right now.

Wente and Davis were a great tag-team for covering issues affecting non-metro Minnesotans. Readers all over the state will be poorer for his departure.