Liars and lowlifes: Minnesota's own Michele Bachmann and Mary Franson

By Mary Turck, News Day

All over the web today: Michele Bachmann's utterly unsubstantiated and malicious charges that the Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated the Obama administration.

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News Day

Peripheral vision

By Sheila Regan, Behind the Story

We’re trying to sharpen up the focus of our reporting here at TC Daily Planet. That’s the news I heard earlier this month, that I welcomed with enthusiasm and also dread.

On the one hand, I always want to improve my writing, and the ideas my editor Mary Turck shared with me to help made a lot of sense, like asking to whom this matters, making sure stakeholders participate in creating the story, asking whether it has an element of surprise or controversy, and if it does, including multiple points of view, etc. 

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Behind the Story

Quid pro concert: We'll let you review if you give us a preview, say some bands

By Jay Gabler, Front Row Seat

We recently contacted the publicity team representing Jason Isbell, a popular musician who just played First Avenue on Friday. Our request: access to review and photograph the show for coverage in the Daily Planet. The response: only if we'd first publish a preview of the show, to help drive ticket sales. We said no thanks.

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Front Row Seat

Just be nice

By Sheila Regan, Behind the Story

I don’t know if it’s just a Minnesota thing, but I was raised to believe that “niceness” was an important value. Just be nice. That’s not nice. Ask me nicely. These were the mantras. And later, realizing the appearance of nicety was even more important than actual niceness.

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Behind the Story

OPINION | Summoned to a 'beit din'

By Mordecai Specktor, American Jewish World

The editorial in the last edition of the Jewish World noted that I and this newspaper were being threatened with a lawsuit, following our coverage of a class action lawsuit against ConAgra Foods/He

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Unhappy Anniversary: In which a young journalist learns the truth about free speech and a free press

By Rich Broderick, Ground Zero

Thirty years ago this June, Israel invaded Lebanon, ostensibly to destroy PLO military units hunkered down along the border of the two countries.

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Ground Zero

17 of my 25-word contributions to the late great Twin Cities A.V. Club

By Jay Gabler, Front Row Seat

It's just been announced that The Onion is closing multiple local editions of its A.V. Club arts and entertainment publication, including the Twin Cities edition and its associated website. While the news doesn't come as a shock—it's the latest wave in a decade-long tide of print-media closures as journalism is rapidly transformed by the Internet—it means the loss of a distinctive voice in local media. The last editor of the A.V. Club Twin Cities was my friend and blogmate Jason Zabel, who kept the publication's writing razor-sharp and mounted a heroic effort to invigorate the Web presence of a publication that had long been primarily focused on its print edition.

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Front Row Seat

Tweeting for Sweden

By Amy Rea, Flyover Land

Those of you who are fans of the Colbert Report know that he's been having some fun over the past week with the Swedish Twitter account, @Sweden, which lets a Swedish citizen take over the account, uncensored, for a week.

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Flyover Land

Catholic Spirit workers, supporters protest outside cathedral

By Michael Moore, St. Paul Union Advocate

With the Archdiocese of St.

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Thou Shalt Not Plagiarize Thyself

By Sheila Regan, Behind the Story

The world of media writers who write about media writers went aflame this week after Jim Romensko outed Jonah Leher for “copy-and-pasting” his own material from one article to another in different publications. Romensko pointed out that three paragraphs of a blog post Leher wrote for The New Yorker were remarkably similar to an article he wrote for the Wall Street Journal last fall. It turns out that it wasn’t the only time Leher has done this.

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Behind the Story
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