Skip to Content

Brian Elfert

Shoreview, MN
Commenter for
3 years 26 weeks

Recent Comments

Posted on 10/24/12 at 02:29 pm in response to Why the St. Paul Pioneer Press dropped political endorsements

I would be happy if newspapers just got rid of the opinions/editorials page all together. There are people who won't buy either the St. Paul or Minneapolis paper because of perceived bias on the opinion page. Lots of people call the Star Tribune the Red Star.

Posted on 12/21/11 at 11:07 pm in response to WLTE flipping to country competition for K102

I hate to lose this station. It was the only station worth listening to on FM.

Posted on 08/05/11 at 08:47 am in response to Minnesota's county highway funding system supports roads to nowhere

Gas taxes are not a myth. They pay for state highways and CSAH roads. Property taxes only pay for some county and most local roads.

The state (not including local and county) spends around $1 billion a year on road construction. In some recent years the state has spent well in excess of $1 billion with stimulus and some extra money form the 2008 transportation.

The amount spent on light rail construction so far (About $1 billion) would maybe fund one year's worth of road...

Posted on 04/05/11 at 07:07 pm in response to Star Tribune web redesign: Open thread

What revenue model would you folks who think banner ads don't work suggest instead? It has been proven time and again that Internet users won't pay for their news. I never quite realized how many ads the old site had until the new site came online.

There is a sign in/sign out button at the top of the page, but it strangely doesn't appear until the page is fully loaded.

The comments section sucks worse than before. It is almost unreadable due to the lack of proper borders...

Posted on 03/23/10 at 09:12 pm in response to Dark Star exits WCCO-AM; who will follow?

Even if WCCO radio gets the Twins broadcast rights again that wouldn't start for a year. The station also needs a host for the half a year the Twins don't have games.

Dark Star was unlistenable so I won't miss him. I almost never listen to WCCO at night because I can't stand sports coverage. Mike Max is way better than Dark Star.

Posted on 02/19/10 at 10:20 pm in response to What if a news website promised no Olympics spoilers?

News websites generally don't pay for themselves. If I ran a news website why would I link to another website for Olympics results and lose advertising revenue? Even Minnpost runs ads to help pay the bills.

Posted on 02/17/10 at 05:47 pm in response to What if a news website promised no Olympics spoilers?

So, should every website not publish any news unless they have a reporter they actually employ reporting the story?

If a planes crashes in the middle of the Atlantic we shouldn't hear about it I guess since no reporter was actually there and likely no reporter is going out to the crash site.

Posted on 01/17/10 at 01:05 pm in response to Pioneer Press holding company announces quickie bankruptcy

Unless a combined operation were to publish both papers I don't see a huge revenue upside to a combination.

If a single combined newspaper were published a lot of ad revenue would likely be lost. Advertisers who bought display and classified ads in both papers would be unlikely to pay the same amount for an ad in a single papr as as they previously paid for ads in two papers.

On a similiar note, some advertisers who advertised in one paper may not want to pay for expanded...

Posted on 12/22/09 at 07:56 pm in response to Startribune.com: One billion page views served

55 pages a month is less than 2 pages a day. I can believe that the average is that high.

Of course, the page views would be less if the pages were LONGER! The stories are split into way too many pieces. No story in the printed paper ever has more than one jump unless it is a multi page feature article like the Gang Strike Force.

Posted on 11/12/09 at 05:46 pm in response to Let the Star Tribune's new e-commerce era begin: CarSoup partnership

Cars.com is owned in part by McClatchy. No doubt Star Tribune was forced to use cars.com under previous ownership.

Carsoup.com is my last choice when looking for a vehicles. I don't understand how they have the largest market share. I use autotrader.com and cars.com because carsoup.com's inventory lags far behind.

One problem with all online car classifieds is duplication. I don't think more than 50% of the listings on any one site are unique. Car dealers will list the same...