Star Tribune adds D.C. bureau's Roper to Minnesota political team
With an election year about to heat up substantially, the Star Tribune has reassigned D.C. reporter Eric Roper to its Minnesota political team. Strib managing editor Rene Sanchez says the move represents a net gain of one for the desk that includes Rachel Stassen-Berger, Mike Kaszuba, Pat Doyle and Baird Helgeson.
What about D.C., where Kevin Diaz holds down the fort? Roper will be replaced by an intern, Sanchez says. While that is a step backward, experience-wise, it's less than you might think: Roper joined the paper in that capacity in 2009, fresh out of George Washington University. (Until last month, the Strib had Diaz, Roper and intern Hayley Tsukayama in the bureau, but Tsukayama's stint ended when she got her master's degree.)
Even as Washington has become a bigger part of American life (stimulus, bank bailouts and health care), D.C. remains foreign territory for most Minnesota-based news organizations; Diaz and MinnPost's Derek Wallbank are the only full-time, state-focused reporters deployed.
The vast maw of the Internet does kick out stories of Minnesota relevance (tilted toward search-engine-friendly Michele Bachmann and Al Franken), and locally based reporters do analyze from here. Still, not being there in any kind of numbers undoubtedly hurts depth and breadth.
The Strib is at least hanging on as newspapers nationally exit the scene; in 2009: the Chicago Tribune and the Media General chain closed their Washington bureaus.
Most Commented