MinnPost leads the way in quality local journalism again (updated)

MinnPost - High-quality journalism for people who care about Minnesota is at it again.

We had to laugh at Minnpost's title of its repackaging of the press release announcing his district and communications director's additional duties Southern Minnesota has an economic recovery guru. When did coordinators become gurus?

We wonder if anyone from the MinnPost ever sets foot  in Southern Minnesota. On Monday, for instance, the same repackager posted a rewrite of an article from the Mankato Free Press under the headline, Mankato merchants worry stimulus highway project will hinder commerce and first paragraph:

Sure, the stimulus bill will pump money into the economy and fix some glaring infrastructure problems, but some Mankato business people worry that one of the projects -- reconstruction of Hwy. 169 as it goes through downtown -- may create new problems.

“We’re excited, we’re jazzed for the city to look better and more friendly,” business owner Tia Summers told the Mankato Free Press. “But it’s just really scary. Six months without our bread and butter? We might not be here in six months.”

The problem? As a commenter pointed out on Monday:

This article is solely about St. Peter merchants and businesses that are affected by a potential Hwy 169 reconstruction in St. Peter. The headline and first graph incorrectly refer to Mankato, not St. Peter.

We were born in Mankato and attended St. Peter's public schools from second grade through high school graduation and can attest that the Greater Minnesota cities are two different towns separated by miles of countryside. Most travelers on Highway 169 have probably noticed the same thing as they roll along the Minnesota River Valley.

Minnpost has had five days to correct the errors.

Is this geographic ignorance (and failure to correct a glaring mistake) what MinnPost is using the $105,000 it received in November from the Knight Foundation to "expand the local reporting capacity of MinnPost.com and provide a viable alternate local news site"?  Kimball has expanded Mankato's boundaries to include St. Peter. That's one strategy for expanded coverage.

No doubt the citizens of Mankato and St. Peter cheered this development, and will be heartened to know that Knight's CEO praised the venue in a January article with these words:

In announcing the grants, the president and CEO of Knight, Alberto Ibargüen, said: "At Knight Foundation, we firmly believe that you cannot effectively manage the affairs of a community in a democracy without the free flow of information. That's why we believe that information is a core community need, as critical as any to a healthy community.

Without the MinnPost--and the foundation support to fund it--Minnesotans would simply be in the dark about the miasmatic jungles of Southern Minnesota. Why, they might have to turn to unpaid bloggers who are willing to post about local coverage and who know where to find towns like Mankato and St. Peter.

Funny how that goes when the MinnPost hired someone to scold bloggers when we didn't get our facts right, as we noted in Minnpost to battle fellow citizens' reckless blogging.  As the new blog nanny wrote then:

Now, being a blogger with a worldwide audience also comes with a lot of responsibility. We've all heard at least one story about a blogger who has misled, misrepresented or flat-out lied on their blog.
 
Simply put, there's a lot of garbage in the blogosphere and I won't hesitate to call out a Minnesotan who blogs recklessly.

The people-powered media revolution is knocking at our door, friends. It's time to peek between the curtains.

How much of the Kinght funding helps out with that?  Or does it all go tohelp MinnPost make its own mistakes? For now, we're simply not asking MinnPost for directions.

(And yes, we have a screen shot).

Update: A member of MinnPost's team contacted us to let us know that the post is being corrected.

Now if we can just convince the e-democracy.org team that we're not remotely interested in spending our gas money on a trip to Duluth where we can pay $99 for a hotel room and $35 for the privilege of participating in an "unconference" in which the  Blandin Foundation-funded Minnesota Voices Project gleans what we know (just how many of those voices in the project actually live outside of the Twin Cities?).

We don't need help getting our voice heard online. And we certainly don't need to pay for the privilege of giving away our expertise to a funded grant project. [end update]