Name a news story in recent memory and it’s likely that someone leaving the Star Tribune this month wrote about it, photographed it, wrote a headline for it or served the story in some other vital but anonymous way. There's a crowd behind the production of most every newspaper story.
Yet the industry upheaval in newspapers requires smaller staffs, so the 44 people leaving the paper (and that number should climb to 50 soon) are going before they could leave their full measure of work at the Star Tribune. It’s a loss for readers, but maybe a gain for audiences online.
Those who are leaving take with them an institutional memory compiled here and abroad, at the polls, in the courts, behind police barriers, with grieving families, with prize winners and speechmakers, and a wrestler turned politician. Always on deadline.
Here's what a few had to say about their careers, starting with Chuck Haga, a literary workhorse who, when asked this week where he would go next, said “probably into the woods.”
Chuck Haga
The story I most enjoyed doing was in 1988 when I talked the editors into letting me follow John Steinbeck’s route in Travels With Charley, the book he wrote after roaming the country in the weeks leading up to the 1960 presidential election. I started by talking with Elaine Steinbeck, his widow, who allowed me to see where Charley the poodle was buried and the little shack where the book was written.
In the next 10 weeks, I traveled through about 36 states, stopping every Friday to write an essay for the Sunday paper, touching variously on race, abortion, the environment, how we felt about the Russians, the election -- all the things Steinbeck wrote about.
I talked to hundreds of ordinary Americans, played bingo with the Mohawks in upstate New York, danced at a Cajun music hall in Houma, La., with a woman who startled me by saying she had buried three husbands and was looking for a fourth, attended a Southern Baptist revival meeting in Maggie Valley, N.C., and ultimately came to know Steinbeck, our country and myself better.
I sat one night on the rocky coast of Oregon, with wine and sourdough bread bought earlier that day in Seattle, and listened to the Pacific Ocean. I felt a presence at my back -- a physical presence -- and I turned and realized it was all the country I had passed through, including the Atlantic off Sag Harbor, Long Island, my jumping-off point.
The stories I think I’m proudest of are those about ordinary people who weren’t famous or infamous, rich or powerful, including the 60 or 70 stories I’ve done over the years about people who took part in World War II. After profiling five guys who took part in D-Day, and five guys who survived Pearl Harbor, a nurse from southwestern Minnesota somewhere who held bloody hands on the beach at Anzio, a Shakopee gardener who learned about hunger and starvation as a POW in Germany, a girl who gave up her tricycle in a scrap drive -- I’ve never been able since to look at a man in his 80s without thinking, “He might have landed on Omaha Beach.” (My big regret is not putting a bunch of them in a book and calling it “The Greatest Generation” before Tom Brokaw thought of doing that.)
Many of the stories of the past few years have been sadder stories, and I think they took a toll on me over time: the abduction and murder of Dru Sjodin, Erika Dalquist and other young women; the deaths of soldiers and Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan; the shootings near Rice Lake, Wis., and at Red Lake High School. They were all important stories that needed to be done. But it broke my heart every time I listened to Allan Sjodin smile and talk about his daughter.
Doug Grow
Columnist Doug Grow has 3,485 bylines in the newspaper’s computerized database, and that’s counting just since 1986 when the database was created. Grow pre-dates it by seven years. His columns included the story of a stolen dog returned, the life’s work of a man who cared for the poor, and the passing of the manually operated elevators in St. Paul City Hall in 1986. He started at the paper in 1979.
Q: What story impacted you most?
A: It’s hard to describe the one that had the most impact on me. It was a little girl who committed suicide up in Roseville. Named Kathi Vonderhaar. It involved youth hockey and a sexual assault and nothing ever happened to [the perpetrators] and it drove her to suicide.
Q: What was your focus as a columnist?
A: There are so many, so many incredible people that are so self sacrificing and are so damned decent, so this is a vehicle where you can actually tell some of those stories. Sometimes I’m just overwhelmed. It’s an incredible gig because you get to meet this remarkable people. I used to work at the Post-Dispatch and every day there was this big sign on the wall when you walked into there, ‘Afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.’ So there’s a certain element of that. I suppose that’s some of that 1960s stuff. We are blessed to just be surrounded by so many great people. If I’m interested in something I figure there’s a fightin’ chance that someone else is interested in it and try not to be terribly predictable.
Q: Did you feel like you were effective in solving problems?
A: The key thing is, I don’t want to sound falsely modest or anything but it’s not me. It’s this forum, so sometimes you actually can do things. It’s always amazing you can write about some poor schlub and terrible things are happening to and you get no response. You write about a dog and people from all over start emoting. It’s one of the strange things that I’ve never quite understood. So whenever you think nobody’s reading you have to write about a dog.
Q: So what’s next?
A: I don’t like the word retire, so I’ve got to keep working. I have some things I’d like to do. The beauty of this job is you can do it as something you believe in and still get paid. So whatever is next I hope it’s in that same category. I doubt that it’s writing, simply because this market, the freelance market is filled, but there are some things that I really have strong feelings about and I’d like to get involved in, be it public education or something along those lines, become an advocate of some sort maybe.
Q: What do you think about where this industry’s headed?
A: One of the reasons to go is I’m not necessarily convinced that we’re headed in the right direction now. And I hope I’m wrong, because I want the paper to succeed. I really believe in the end that the franchise is still ours to wake the town and tell the people that the news is more than the most recent murder, that our audience is very engaged, very involved. Sure it’s going to be more online, but you can’t replace reporters on the street. And there’s got to be a place for this. Maybe it’s going to have to be in a non profit, public radio format. I don’t know, but there’s got to be something. And it’s not because of what you and I do as individuals, but because of what the business is about. There’s got to be a place for it. And nobody else is doing it.
Q: Have you gotten your acceptance letter for the company buyout program?
A: I got accepted. I applied and I got accepted! The first time I ever applied to something and they said ‘Hell yes!’ So it can’t be a real exclusive group. June 15 appears to the last day. So now I’m cranking out something for tomorrow.
Sharon Schmickle
A veteran reporter who covered, among other things, agriculture, politics, biotechnology and, eventually, the ties between Minnesota and the rest of the world, Schmickle was a 1995 finalist for the Pulitzer prize. She recently has covered the state's Liberian community. She plans to continue writing and reporting.
There is this funeral, see. Everybody’s grieving and weeping. Suddenly the corpse (the Star Tribune) sits bolt upright in the coffin and says “I ain’t dead.” It is way premature to cry for this newspaper. Good God, several hundred thousand people still read it, and they care so much about it they act like they own it -- call us every day and tell us how to do our jobs. And we’ve only just begun to tap the power of online publication with all of its potential to tell our stories in rich new dimensions.
This is a pivotal time, though. And that makes it a good time to leave. Since I went to the Washington bureau in 1993, I’ve covered Minnesota’s interests from a national and international perspective. I’ve reported from 24 different countries, most recently Iraq, Afghanistan, Thailand, Egypt and Greece. Now, as the newspaper prepares to turn intensely local, that resume isn’t a good fit. So it’s time for me to move on.
Joe Kimball
Joe Kimball, who for 20 years covered the St. Paul beat, said he wanted to continue writing his Around St. Paul column but it was killed. A 31-year employee of the newspaper, he plans to start a new career.
Over the years I’ve covered courts, government, the Legislature, but loved the St. Paul beat the best.
My biggest story ever came in my first year. I’d been hired as a Sunday features writer, and was headed up towards Duluth one morning to write about a strawberry farmer when I heard on the radio that Duluth police were reporting a double homicide; no more details. I pulled over at a gas station -- no cell phones in those days -- and called the office to ask if I could please cover murders instead of strawberries. The news hadn’t hit the wires yet, so they said ok.
Of course it turned out to be the Congdon murders, the heiress and her night nurse killed in a plot by her son in law to speed up the inheritance. I stayed the rest of the summer in Duluth, covered Roger’s trial the next summer and Marjorie’s trial the following summer. Had to testify at that one.
Marjorie went on to a career as a sociopath, getting charged with bigamy, two arsons, another murder, and now, fraud and forgery. I covered every twist for the newspaper. When Glensheen, the Congdon Mansion, opened for tours in 1979, they wouldn’t even acknowledge on the tours that murders had occurred, so I wrote a history of the case, and tour guide, which has sold more than 75,000 copies. I update it nearly every year, to keep up with Marjorie’s antics. Memorial Day weekend I signed books at the mansion.
This is not just caused by
This is not just caused by the impact of the Internet. This is being seen across the nation as newspapers move farther and farther to the left and continue to lose their readership. There is a reason the nickname of the Strib is the "Red Star!". The editor's need to finally wake up and figure out to get back readership they need to produce content that is balanced and somewhat objective. Look at the liberal rags (and the Strib is one of them) across the country they are all losing readership. I cancelled my subscription close to a year ago, I could no longer relate to the content that was being spewed out on the pages and presented as balanced reporting. Editor's get a clue, go back to the true mandates of journalism. I say good riddance to most of you.