Bruce Benidt
Jon Austin
tcarideo
Ellen Mrja
Mike KeliherMike Hatch ducked an interview with MinnPost’s Eric Black on the grounds that he mistakenly thought it was the Rochester Post asking for an interview about his tenure as AG and that of his successor. He was shocked – shocked! – to find “that in fact you represent a blog called the Minnesota Post.”
This strikes me as the funniest thing I’ve read today. Mr. Hatch is one of the most media-adept politicians I’ve ever observed; does he really expect me to believe he doesn’t know what MinnPost is or where Mr. Black is coming from?
- Austin
Filed under: Journalism, Media, Politics | Tagged: Eric Black, Lori Swanson, Mike Hatch, MinnPost
I love how, when he learned that Eric was writing for “some blog,” he assumed some sort of bias and that the brilliant Mr. Black had somehow turned into a hack…
Funny. Darn that Minnesota Post.
A quadtrillion years ago, I worked in the Attorney General’s office under Attorney General Humphrey, but left for the private sector more than a year before Mr. Hatch was elected. For what it’s worth, what Mr. Black’s reports from unnamed attornies is consistent with what I’ve heard for years from respected former colleagues, including many who were previously very fond of Generals Hatch and Swanson. Those former loyalists of Hatch and Swanson don’t speak out publicly because they say they fear retribution. I don’t know if the attornies’ allegations are true, because I wasn’t in the office at the time, but I can say Mr. Black is certainly not fabricating those sources and allegations.
In fact, I have to believe a politically connected fellow such as Mr. Black knew the core of these allegations when he worked at the Star Tribune and General Hatch was running for Governor. Given that, it is interesting that Mr. Black is reporting the allegations from MinnPost, but did not report on any of this from the Star Tribune. Does that mean the Strib stifled Black and his colleagues, but MinnPost didn’t? Were that true, I would have a renewed interest in MinnPost as a publication with more courage than I’d previously supposed.
Or just that the rules are different? Mr. Black is certainly permitted to inject more of his voice into his MinnPost writing than was ever allowed at the Strib. Maybe there’s also a different standard when it comes to use of anonymous sources and such.
Mr. Black occasionally surfs in our bay, maybe we can entice him to comment on these questions?
- Austin
Good points Jon. I know that the Strib couldn’t have reported these allegations in the same voice and manner as Black did today. But the Strib could have reported on this in its own way, and it feels like they took a pass. I just wonder why we weren’t reading some version of this when it mattered a hell of a lot more. Fear of getting chewed out? Pro-DFL bias? Spooked by Hatch-wary libel lawyers?
Sorry to dump cold water on everyone. 99% of Minnesota doesn’t know about MinnPost. You guys tend to drink your own bathwater, so Hatch’s ignorance about MinnPost probably would come as a surprise to you.
H -
Actually, I think the correct analogy is that we eat our own dog food, but I’ll eat my hat if Mike Hatch – the most media-aware politician I’ve seen in 17 years living in Minnesota – doesn’t know exactly what “Minnesota Post” – and who Eric Black – is.
- Austin
Today, MinnPost’s Part II came out. The thesis of Part II is: “But the actual damage done to the targets of Hatch’s wrath seems minor compared to the level of the fear.”
The series documents a number of examples of people who say they were forced out of their jobs. MinnPost doesn’t view loss of a job as “actual damage?”
There’s not a smoking gun there, IMHO, but there sure is a lot of smoke. Too bad, as Mr. Black notes, that neither Mr. Hatch or Ms. Swanson wanted to provide their perspective.
Maybe this is all just a reflection of Minnesota’s passive-aggressive personality. We’re so adverse to direct conflict that we perceive bullying – and that’s what I’d call what’s described in MinnPost I and II and some of what I observed from afar during Mr. Hatch’s tenure in office – as being more threatening than it is (bullies, my mother used to tell me, rarely fight if you stand up to them. That said, she once met my school bus with a baseball bat in her hand as a way to make that point to a particularly nasty 9th grader).
- Austin