Although the Strib hasn’t publicly announced it, the Sunday Op-Ex is no longer using the regular rotation of columns by Katherine Kersten, Jason Lewis, Bonnie Blodgett and the team of Tim Penny and Tom Horner.
You may still see columns by any or all of the above on the Strib op-ed page, but it will be on a less regular, and probably less frequent spot basis.
Editorial section chief Scott Gillespie told me that the paper has started a new regular column by D.J. Tice, has space constraints, and “we felt it was time for a change.”
Kersten and Lewis
were pretty repetitive.
I suspect that they will say just as much of substance in a third as many columns.
This is great news for those of us who read the Star Tribune. Their “regulars” on the op-ed page were becoming stale, and you could predict accurately what Lewis and Kersten, even Penny and Horner, would say.
The paper has access to other, more varied and informed op-ed writers–like those who appeared in last fall’s re-assessment of Minneapolis’s development/future, that included some really thought-provoking, detailed and innovative ideas, as well as fantastic historical re-caps. Use this sort of article, and stop trying to provoke the left by including the absurd claims of the Tea Party types on the fringe right like Lewis, et al.
It’s doubtful
that many conservatives read the Strib anyway.
So far so good
I was pleased to notice the absence of these writers over the last couple of weeks. Better pieces, and better writing have replaced them. So far I like this new editor.
Doug Tice is apparently
the new voice of the conservatives on the Star-Tribune editorial page.
Interested readers might want to check out David Brauer’s laudatory remarks about Tice from 2009:
Star Tribune’s Tice: from politics editor to editorial page
link: http://www.minnpost.com/braublog/2009/06/star-tribunes-tice-politics-editor-editorial-page
such as:
“However, I’ve spoken with many staffers over the years about my former Twin Cities Reader boss, and he’s generally held in high esteem not just for a sharp mind, but as guy who hasn’t put his finger on the scales. (My colleague Eric Black, Tice’s former sparring partner on the Strib’s Big Question blog, is a huge fan.)”
I am also a huge Tice fan. He is an excellent writer who also uses logic unlike some of his predecessors. Conservatives and Republicans are very fortunate to have the rational and intelligent voice of Tice heard on a regular basis.
As a perhaps amusing aside. The usual suspects have been very upset about Kersten et al. having their plug pulled. See for example:
Glahn: The Shape of the Playing Field, Part III
link: http://billglahn.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-shape-of-playing-field-part-3.html
and
Berg: The Secret Handshake
link: http://www.shotinthedark.info/wp/?p=41347
Blodgett’s departure
It is hard to believe that liberal columnist Bonnie Blodgett’s disastrous, fact-challenged column Nov. 24 about Cargill that was skillfully refuted by its vice president for corporate affairs did not have something to do with her departure.
http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentaries/233878281.html
There’s a difference
between a ‘skillful refutation’ and facts, as anyone who has witnessed a high school debate knows.
Mike Fernandez (vice president for corporate affairs at Cargill) is hardly an unbiased source of information, and does a professional job of cherry picking his facts.
For instance, it may well be true that “96 percent of crop-producing farms in the United States are family-owned”, but these are for the most part large family corporations, not small family farms operated by the family plus a few hired hands in the traditional sense.
And, it is literally true that “We are subject to and comply with the laws and regulations of all of the 67 countries in which we operate”. However, the governments of developing nations are even more compliant with large sources of income than is ours. So Cargill is saying that, as in the United States, they comply with the letter of the laws that they helped to write.
As a corporation, Cargill’s first financial obligation is to its shareholders, not to the public.
I thought
Cargill was a privately owned company that did not have shareholders?
Not that I disagree with the gist of your argument.
‘Owned’
You’re right that there’s no publicly issued stock shares.
There is still ownership, however, and Cargill is still incorporated.
So in a more generic sense there are still shareholders who have first dibs on profits.
Just looked at their Web site. It’s interesting that they refer to themselves just as ‘Cargill’, not as Cargill Inc. However, at the bottom of the page where it matters legally there is the statement:
“© 2014 Cargill, Incorporated. All Rights Reserved”
So they still quack like a corp.
Opinion page changes.
After reading clearly two fraudulent statements on weather and climate the past month I welcome the change. One writer attributed global warming as the cause for the Polar Vortex and another stated that Minnesota climate will be like Kansas in 20 years.
That’s why
these are labeled opinions,
not facts.