Court OKs Strib reorganization as paper hires star PiPresser

Stassen-Berger Strib-bound: Pioneer Press political reporter Rachel Stassen-Berger, who superbly covered the Franken/Coleman Senate Marathon for the Pioneer Press, is crossing the river. MinnPost’s David Brauer checks in from vacation to report that she’s moving to the Star Tribune. PiPress editor Thom Fladung says Stassen-Berger’s job as Capitol correspondent will be refilled.

Strib reorg OK’d: In a Jill Barshay story bylined “special to the Star Tribune,” the Minneapolis paper reported yesterday that a U.S. bankruptcy court gave the go-ahead for the paper’s reorganization plans. If the Strib’s creditors agree, as expected, the paper could come out of bankruptcy as early as Sept. 17 as a new entity and with a seriously lightened debt load ($100 million instead of the $500 million it reported at the start of bankruptcy late last year). Another change: a new publisher and board of directors are expected, as well.

Freudian typo? Today’s link-rich edition of MinnPost’s Daily Glean might suggest that the site’s copyeditor went on vacation along with regular Glean writer David Brauer. Typos happen — like the misspelling of names of Gov. Pawlenty, MnIndy’s Chris Steller and MNPublius’ Aaron Landry — but there’s one that seems more like a Freudian slip. In discussing Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s Thursday address to the Republican National Committee, Glean sub Max Sparber summarizes a Strib story, stating that Pawlenty “has a rather ingenious idea for how to attract new voters into the swindling ranks of the Republican Party” [emphasis mine]. That error has since been corrected.

Old news at Strib blog: The word “blog” appears nowhere on the Star Tribune’s home page, and its once-popular Big Question blog seems awfully hard to find (blogs appear in the front-page pulldown menu for “Opinion”). Maybe there’s a reason for the low profile: Yesterday’s post about Rep. Michele Bachmann getting roasted in an Auto-Tune the News episode follows up stories on the same topic by MnIndy, City Pages and MinnPost nearly three weeks ago. Those three sites might be the answer to the post’s headline: “Michele Bachmann, pop song diva …who knew?“