The daily digest of Twin Cities culture | Secrets of the City

I read the Gyllenhaal piece this weekend, and my first response was total terror. Like any dutiful liberal, I am terrified of change (even though I realize that my nervousness may be unfounded). And I love the Star Tribune with every piece of my heart. In fact, after reading Saturday's paper, I called my mother solely to rave about how great the Metro section was that day. She agreed. And I have NOT forgiven them for their last round of changes...namely, replacing Tina's Groove with 9 Chickweed Lane, perhaps the lamest comic of all time. The concept of "One-Minute Strib" particularly worries me-if any Strib people are reading this, I have one desperate request: PLEASE don't dumb down the paper in an attempt to reach out to more readers. PLEASE don't pander to the lowest common denominator. That demographic can watch Channel 9 news. Please keep our newspaper vital, engaging, and intelligent.

Although it's arguably better than local television news, I fear too much internet influence, too. One of the many problems with television news is its emphasis on schmaltz--it's saccharine and it panders to a low intelligence level. The internet isn't guilty of this is the same way. But the internet has a whole host of its own problems--lack of reliability, yes, but its primary problem is its emphasis on brevity. Every time I log onto cnn.com, for instance, I search for the rest of the lead article, only to realize there isn't a rest of. There may be streaming video footage of the item at hand, or audio clips that I take 10 minutes to hear because I have to download this week's version of RealPlayer as last week's is obsolete, but that isn't substantive in the same way as an article in the paper. This is why the concept of condensing news down to be readable in one-minute disturbs me. One simply cannot fully grasp any significant news item in one minute. Rather that attempting to mimic or exhibit the influence of television or internet, the newspaper should embrace the opposite direction--in a fast-paced world where "news" consists of ready-made soundbites and becomes obsolete in mere moments, I want (and I suspect I'm not alone) an intelligent and substantive alternative. I hate getting news from both the television and internet, because while I walk away with a lot of bits of information, I don't have a deep understanding of anything I've encountered. And there are still a lot of us out there who want that deep sense. I supplement the newspaper with magazines, certainly, but the concept of an largely unbiased, in-depth source of news (international, national, and local) that I read every day remains by far the most compelling.

I skimmed Gyllenhal's article about the upcoming changes, and I remember reading something about a twice-weekly "World News" section. Does anyone know if this means that coverage of world events will decrease on the remaining five days? I don't need more local/human interest.

I wish the Tribune would focus MORE on local news. There is so much national and world garbage in there that I have zero idea what is going on in Minneapolis or the Twin Cities area unless I pick up and read the myriad of small, local papers such as Southwest Journal, The Wedge, etc, but the reporting there is hardly on par with the Tribune.

National and international news is so readily available now with every news outlet having a website, I don't think it needs to be rehashed again in the Tribune. Instead, I wish they would devote their time and resources to being more local. For example, cover Minneapolis government the same way they cover the State Capitol. Tell me what goes on in my neighborhood, tell me about some ordinace the city is considering. This is the news I want but currently don't have. Give it to me.