The profile hasn't even run yet and he's already livid. I don't understand that. If someone actually read the teaser, it seems like the profile hopes to show a gentler side of Barnard that many don't see.

How can someone who dishes it out so regularly be that thin-skinned?

Shrug.

This reminds me a little of last year when The New Yorker was going to profile Michael Savage. He agreed to be interviewed, but his acolytes were up in arms about what that liberal rag would do to him. In the end, it turned out to be a fairly sympathetic profile and Savage himself loved it (it was heavily criticized on some liberal blogs). He spent days reading portions of it and many of his listeners grudgingly admitted it was fair, and couldn't believe that horrible New Yorker could print such a decent thing. Savage actually had an interesting point during those discussions, wondering why conservatives didn't have any magazine that was the equal of the New Yorker. Why couldn't they have something that talked about the arts and had great writing and talked about the theater and wrote about politics with grace and insight.

I guess he didn't realize it was a rhetorical question.

Depending on what the story looks like, I can see a similar reaction from Barnard's fans, although not from the man himself, since his grudge with the Strib goes so far back.

DB - aren't you the least bit concerned that you might become the next target of a rampage?

One part of me sez TommyB can dish it out, but can't take it.

The other part of me sez, that's his Cartoon Character persona talking. It's made Big Bucks for the Big Mouth. And he proves every day - as P.T. Barnum (who Tommy should revere) said - "There's One Born Every Minute."

As a 30 year resident of the Minneapolis North Side where he and Prince grew up, I say....You're Always Welcome Back, dudes.

Who is Tom Barnard?

I'm betting this is just another way to self-promote. He whines, and all his groupies jump on the bandwagon to say how awesome he is and how tormented by 'The Man' he is. All that noise will increase his already insane ratings.

Even this is misleading:

"Minnesota's shock-jock Tom Barnard is known to critics as a crude loudmouth. His friends say he has a more intellectual side. Read the latest Minnesota Profile only in the Star Tribune."

The word "Minnesota" is in there twice. He lives in Florida and does the show from Florida. I wonder if the piece will talk how most Minnesotans are duped into thinking he's in some local studio instead of West Palm Beach.

The average Strib commenter's command of English is demonstrated by this Barnard fan:

"I decided to comment on the artical on the Star Trib websit. . . . Amazing how they patrol the views of there readers."

Nevertheless, it's great that Facebook posters have to use their real names.

"Barnard has never lost ratings points for being thin-skinned; resentment and umbrage is at the core of his persona." ... Yep.

Perhaps I am just a cynical old radio guy/political hack. In my book Barnard is playing it pretty smart. We are all talking about him, Facebook is abuzz with his name and people will be turning to the article to see what the fuss is about.

“The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.” Oscar Wilde

Sorry, some of you people are giving him far too much credit.

Reading the comments by him and his sycophants (and actually listening to his show) is the best eveidence I have that America's headed toward 3rd World status. Seriously, where else would someone say they "don't read newspapers or watch the news" and wear it as a badge of honor?

It's interesting to me you posted people's facebook comments. Don't you think that is crossing a line to take a semi-private (amongst a select group of people) comment and then post it in a totally public forum with the person's picture and name. It seems akin to me of overhearing a non-public figure say something stupid at a party and deciding to put the comment and the person's picture in the newspaper without their consent or any follow up, which would never be done, I might add. Just curious, since I've never seen this before, and it opens a can of privacy worms in my view.

If schools can discipline students based on photos made available to semi-private groups, I think it's kosher to post screenshots of facebook wall posts on a public forum. Aside from it being borderline insane to expect privacy when posting on a facebook wall, the other thing to keep in mind is that the number of people who can see the post is not within the control of the poster, but rather the postee.

After all, anyone who is friends with the postee can see the message, and only the postee can control that.

I think this is Tom's genius and has been all along . . . the sense that you understand him and his motivations but a nagging suspicion that he isn't showing all his cards. I don't think he's a master manipulator, but nor do I think he's an open book. He's also a person of contradictions. And everyone wants a look behind the curtain because Tom is in some ways transparent and other ways opaque. Now stop me before I mix another metaphor.

I'm reminded here of Andy Kaufman, who so blurred any line between his act and his actual personality that after awhile nobody could find a difference between what he did and who he was. I'm pretty sure the whole package in Barnard's case is just one big joke, including his "outrage" over the yet-to-be-seen profile. The problem, of course, is that no matter how smart you are, if your act is crude and you are indisinguishable from your act...well, you see what I mean.

What other statewide Republican has the Strib endorsed in 25 years? What Republican presidential candidate has the Strib endorsed, ever? One endorsement does not a conservative newspaper make.

Despite this one endorsement of Coleman, the Strib is a liberal newspaper.

Here's a post I wrote a few years back on the topic of endorsements:

http://swanblog.blogspot.com/2004/10/star-tribune-endorsements-and-bias.html

It does remain to be seen. It is also safe to say that the Coleman endorsement is not a slam dunk rebuttal against charges of Strib liberalism.

There is also the claim (I always thought it specious, by the way) that there is a wall between the reporting and the editorial board. So the rank and file reporters could be libs even if the editorial board were part of the vast right wing conspiracy.

if by chance you dont like it, leave! He speaks for many of us without a voice!

Hey,

Good article but....Did you know that it's a SERIOUS offense if you use someone's Facebook postings without the permission from each person who's comment you displayed

There was a major case regarding this in Forth Worth last year. The woman got busted for copyright infringement and received quite a hefty fine as this is STRONGLY forbidden in Facebook's Terms of Service.

Careful...

Nice to see you took private Facebook comments and posted them on the world wide web for EVERYONE to see.

You tricked this 'shock jock' into friending you and you decide to take our (his friends and fans) comments and make a story out of it? Why do you think Facebook has a privacy policy? You posted people's comments and pictures that are marked private that not just anyone can see. Maybe you should read this privacy policy again. You just posted these private comments and messages to a public site.

Consider yourself reported to Facebook.

Going on Facebook under the guise of "friending" Tom and then using his profile with people who have no knowledge that you are going to publish their names and comments in a public forum like MinnPost shows the kind of unethical journalism that you practice. Before you are going to throw arrows at someone whose ideas and opinions you detest, you may want to look in the mirror. It would be nice for once to be able to read something in the print or electronic media that wasn't so far left or right leaning. Tom may be controversial but he is not afraid to speak about the things that a lot of people do not have the guts to say. I have a feeling posting private citizens comments on your website may have you working your next job at the Austin Daily Herald.

I am not a heavy user of social media, and I understand David's decision to remove the screen grabs, but if someone "friends" me so I can see their Facebook page, am I only able to see the comments of those people whom I have also been "friended" by? I assume that's not the case.

So why then, since those people have posted to a forum where there are literally thousands of "friends" and their comments will be read by many people they don't know, should we be concerned about their privacy, when they aren't.

It's "social media" not email, right?

I looked through Facebook's terms of service and their privacy policy and I couldn't find anything explicitly forbidding what Mr. Brauer did by capturing comments and images that are visible to all of Mr. Barnard's Facebook "friends" (currently numbering 4,677). Maybe somebody who is more familiar with that document (or the case Mr. Langford references) can post the relevant section and any additional information.

From a non-lawyer perspective, it seems to me that what Mr. Brauer did was akin to a reporter attending a public event attended by 4,676 other individuals and quoting what was said in that forum. What expectation of privacy exists in such circumstances? What harm is done to the people whose comments are reported?

Thanks.

Austin Austin and Platt- Your mere attempt at justifying the actions of Mr Brauer tells me I am wasting my time with this but, if Mr Brauer was grabbing posts from a "Public" facebook page it would be a different story. Tom's page is private and requires a "friendship" permission to enter. Regardless if anyone was harmed or threatened is beside the point.

Honestly, as a huge fan of Mr Brauer this article really set me back. I have read it multiple times now trying to understand the point. I cant get past the fact that Brauer set out to "friend" Tom. And, that clearly Brauer never had any intention of actually being friendly with Barnard. It begs the question if you dont like him why even friend him in the first place? So Tom Barnard complains alot and uses salty language. (There is no truth to the rumor that Mr Brauer will friend GW Bush next month and report back that he is stupid)

There is this to consider: I believe Mr Brauer was a former morning show host at KFAN. If I remember correctly his show would have gone up against Tommy B.

Again, if anybody can point to a specific section of Facebook's terms of service or privacy policy that Mr. Brauer violated, please post it. The same with any court ruling that may be applicable.

Facebook has unilaterally expanded the definition of the word "friend" to mean something beyond its traditional meanings. I am a "friend" of Mr. Barnard (as of yesterday) in the Facebook sense of the word but we've never met and I rarely listen to his show. I sent a request to him yesterday because I wanted to read the postings on his page and he accepted my request about an hour later. That's the extent of our relationship. In any context but Facebook, no one would consider us "friends," "friendly" or even 'acquainted" in the sense that we'd met one another.

I have even less of a relationship with the other 4,881 people (as of this morning) who are listed as "friends" of Mr. Barnard (actually I had pre-existing "friend" relationships with 24 other people so make it 4,857). I can read their comments posted to Mr. Barnard's page without any explicit permissions or relationship.

Given the tenuous nature of these relationships and the size of the group, it seems to me that there should be no reasonable expectation that anything posted therein is "private." An analogous situation is if a reporter went to an event at Wilkins Auditorium in Saint Paul (which seats about 5,000) and wrote about the comments from the audience - favorable and otherwise.

If privacy is not a real issue here (and I'm open to hearing why my thinking and analogy on this point are wrong), the other question is whether Mr. Barnard's postings and the comments on his page are some form of protected intellectual property that cannot be used without limit. On this point, I'll have to defer to the IP experts among us for their opinions, but even here there would be some "fair use" exceptions I would think.

I bring all this up not to defend Mr. Brauer (who is quite capable of defending himself) or to attack Mr. Barnard (about whom I'm mostly indifferent except as a social phenomenon) but because I think it's a genuinely interesting set of questions in an area of our society that's rapidly evolving.