MinnPost, a new on-line and print news outlet largely staffed by refugees from the Twin Cities’ two daily papers and primary weekly, has started with a whole slew of wonderful stories. MinnPost challenges the current media models in two interesting ways: its focus on deep coverage (their tag line is “a thoughtful approach to news”) rather than fast-breaking, short-lived stories; and its economic model, more like membership-driven NPR than like the shareholder-bound dailies. With veteran writers like Jim Walsh, Sarah Janacek, and Joe Kimball on board, I’m expecting a lot of really good reading. (Arts editor Casey Selix is a pub-quiz teammate, short-story first-reader, and good friend, but I certainly wouldn’t let that sway my opinion of this site …)
A few articles you ought not to miss:
Sam Grabarski wants cars on Nicollet Mall by Britt Robson: a look at the lobbying efforts to turn Nicollet Mall, which is currently restricted to bikes, buses, taxis, and pedestrians, into a car-centric thoroughfare. While I can see the point of the retail consultants/lobbyists who worry that no one will know what’s on Nicollet Mall if no one drives it (see the next story), I also can’t imagine the Mall without its luxuriously-wide sidewalks, clogged with honking cars.
Urban designers critique Minneapolis and offer this idea: Tear down all those horrible skyways by Steve Berg: the extensive downtown skyway systems (over 7 miles in Minneapolis, over 5 miles in St. Paul), argue architects Jan Gehl and Gil Penalosa, aren’t good for us; they rob the city sidewalks of crucial pedestrian traffic, and create a stratified city, both literally and socially, with the affluent striding through the climate-controlled halls above and the poor on the gray and lifeless streets below. I don’t spend as much time in the downtowns as I’d like, but it’s true that the downtown streets, especially in the fall and winter, are pretty desolate; the skyways, by contrast, are vibrant, colorful, and busy during the weekdays, though in a decidedly private (think shopping mall) rather than public (think outdoor plaza) way. When I worked downtown a decade ago, I had to keep two conflicting maps in my head, one of the street grid and one of the skyway maze, and there were places I could reach by one route but couldn’t navigate by the other. Perhaps the answer to the Nicollet Mall problem above is to chase people out of the skyways, at least during the glorious summer days we frequently experience on the tundra: temperature-controlled gates, maybe, that lock when it warms up? Or photosensitive skyway walls that disappear when the sun is out but close us in during those bleak weeks when we get less than 9 hours of sunlight a day? This seems like something a creative mind could puzzle out…
Word by word, typo by typo, page by page by Dave Wood: though afflicted with a Parkinsons-like disease that makes typing a Herculean challenge, Jon Hassler continues to work his magic with words. Indeed, he expects to finish a new novel for Viking in December. I’m not sure whether a writer should be inspired to greatness by his example, or shamed into silence by his perseverance.
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