Here's how a Thursday post to (Brian) Lambert to the Slaughter begins:
Thursday afternoon at the Star Tribune saw the paper's four metro columnists, Doug Grow, Nick Coleman, Katherine Kersten and Cheryl "CJ" Johnson called in to separate meetings with editors Nancy Barnes and Scott Gillespie and told, in so many words, that the paper was looking to scale back the number of columnists and would any of them care to raise their hands and volunteer for reassignment to the paper's suddenly thin -- and getting thinner -- ranks of street-level reporters?
Many, including Spot, have commented on Katie lack of experience, skill, or talent as a journalist. The last story she actually covered was a bake sale at St. Buford's in Fort Dodge when Katie was a high schooler. One of Lambert's commenters said it pretty well:
They put that ludicrous proposal to Kitty Kersten? Tuh, talk about empty, pro forma procedure. She's not qualified to hit the streets as a reporter. She's never done it. Certainly she invests no shoe leather in her columns.
She's a hot house lily from the world of partisan think tanks hired as a sop to the paper's shrill critics on the right.
So, judging from the misology
[sic]that afflicts mgmt there, Kersten'll get to keep her column because she's not qualified to be a reporter (and it would set off Achinghinder et al at Powerlineblog like the Hound of the Baskervilles). So, paradoxically, either Grow or Coleman will suffer for his three decades plus experience as an actual journalists by losing his column, while Kersten will be inoculated from having the epaulets torn from her sensible frock for her utter lack of credentials as a journalist. Cue Alanis Morrisette [sic] ...
Bet Kersten's glad to be a member of one of those pesky liberal unions.
Oh, and it's Katie, not Kitty.
Katie is the most junior columnist of the four. Spot hopes that Katie becomes a reporter. Spot can hear it already: Katie, come in here. We have to go over this story you wrote about Muslims using the drinking fountains. Yes, Mr. Tice, coming.
Just desserts, Spot says.
Update: Credit where it is due. A thump of the tail to Paul Schmelzer at MinnMon who called the Lambert post to Spot's attention.
Tags: Katherine Kersten, Minneapolis Star Tribune
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