Bluestem Prairie

On pitching stories to Bluestem Prairie: some basic guidelines for communications staff

Bluestem Prairie writes for an audience, however small, that's been built since the blog began in 2006. Let me tell you what you should know about this "brand" before you approach it as a communications staff person.

At first, Bluestem Prairie assembled news digests about Tim Walz's long-shot campaign for congress across a huge district spanning several minor media markets (minor in national terms). I'd noticed that Walz was a bit of a force of nature, surrounded by an energetic, large, and young campaign staff willing to go the distance across the district, and so Bluestem began digesting the news in a district outside of any single major media market. It was fun to test some ideas I had about blogs in minor markets.

There was some original reporting but little editorial opinion. It was inherently a great story that grew as Walz and his campaign staff pulled off one of the most surprising upsets of that wave year.

Over the years, the blog has evolved largely into a place for editorial opinion about rural MInnesota politics, not just those of the First.  And while it's opinion, I try to ground those opinions in research and some incredible sources throughout the state who've proven to be reliable. I also try for humor rather than predictable outrage, mostly because this stuff seems pretty entertaining to me, however upsetting Minnesota's political scene has become.

That's what the readers come here for. That's the brand.

What they don't visit Bluestem for are talking points and messaging developed in a focus group in Alexandria, VA or St. Paul MN, then honed by wordsmiths in a comm staff. It's perfectly fine for other bloggers, right and left, to feel that they are messaging for the campaigns, organizations or movements that deliver that content and copy to them. My readers can find that material at those locations.

Nor am I looking for strategic plans on what and how, in what order, Bluestem should post here or what I should tweet. If paid professionals or ambitious volunteers want to do that, good enough. It's not Bluestem's brand.

While many bloggers appreciate confidential conference calls, "access," and other perks that put them on your team, Bluestem isn't part of your team any more than the Wall Street Journal or the Clara City Herald is part of your team. Or your "partner" or anything such thing. Call me that and you'll probably hear something back that will hurt your gentle professional ears.

So, just as you wouldn't ask a reporter to listen in to an off-the-record, insiders-only strategy session or send a pitch list of what she might tweet and what language she should use in articles, don't invite me to such sessions or send me the "Hi Bloggers" checklist and agenda for supporting your candidate, policy, or end-of-session messaging strategy. I'm not part of a team. I'm a writer, taught by some of the most cantankerous and adorable Southern poets and novelists ever to pitch their tents in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

Send me the press releases you'd send to the Journal and the Herald.  Pitch stories if you want: I love to hear from you. That's part of your business--and as much as I can as a crabby old writer, I'll try to discover the story in the material you send me, weigh its import, then publish what I want.

Publicists who understand this do well. One of the things I've always respected from the Walz campaign was just that: press releases, media conference calls, and the like.  Those who try to goat-rope me into something like a Japanese press club? Not so much. 

The other pet peeve is advice on how to "frame" an issue. Come to me with "help" while dropping the name George Lakoff, and you'll discover that I have a metaphor for you. You won't thank me.

Image: Meridel LeSueur, a beloved crone.

 

 

Winona Daily News: MNGOP "Minnesota malicious" about marriage

Even when I disagree with the views of the Winona Daily News (like the paper's position on making Minnesota a right-to-work state), I enjoy reading the WDN's spirited editorials.

Take today's editorial, Our view: GOP definition of marriage is hateful, penned by editor Darrell Ehrlick for the board:

It would be funny if it wasn't so sad, not to mention hateful. A new Republican initiative seeks to define marriage only between a man and a woman. But it's so much easier to define marriage than admit bigotry, insensitivity and pandering to the worst kind of stereotypes.

With no end in sight to a record state budget deficit, the Republicans in the Legislature have seized on the opportunity to drive a wedge issue into the middle of what is already a tension-packed political climate.

Employing the typical "activist judges" bogeyman, the GOP wants to beat any judge to the punch and define marriage without a single shred of evidence telling the majority of straight Minnesotans how letting two consenting adults marry threatens them in any meaningful way.

Nor do the Republicans pushing this say why it's fair to let some people have a marriage license while others cannot for no other reason than genitalia.

Sorry, that's really what it boils down to.

Republicans pushing this don't like gay people. Instead, they would rather disguise their own prejudice in the form of legislation ... you know, protecting marriage and all. . . .

. . .The message the GOP is sending gays and lesbians could not be clearer.

We like you (or are at least forced to say that for the cameras) - just not as much as straight people.

This new movement isn't just legislation to define marriage.

It's legislation to prove we're bigoted.

This isn't Minnesota nice - it's Minnesota malicious.

In between, Ehrlick chronicles more substantial threats to marriage: divorce, the so-called "marriage penalty" in the tax code, a faltering economy, or "health care or any other number of topics that introduce stress into a relationship than whether two other people can or cannot obtain a piece of paper."

While the WDN may oppose the anti-gay amendment for the hate, I object even more for another reason. No, I don't appreciate it when my fellow Minnesotans say hateful things and act in hateful ways toward my lesbian and gay friends, especially those who are young people from small towns like the one I live in. It tramples on the general sweet and trusting nature these places can nurture when we do our best at bringing up kids, whomever they seek to embrace. Some take their own lives before they realize their own worth.

Nope, it's not the hate but the stupid. 

The stupid that would impoverish both business and the creative human spirit gets to me most. Equality is an American value dear to me, but so is the freedom to dream, to invent, and to innovate. Being able to be a girl who could sass off--and write about it--helped me establish my own sense of equal value as the child of factory workers when I was growing up.  Without the tools of the imagination and innovation, it's as hard to fight poverty, disease, and all the other woes that visit us as it is to combat hatefulness. Equality, fairness, decency and imagination: these are good for business (a good job is the best anti-poverty measure). These values are good for people.

And the stupid exacts a price from communities, while dampening a business climate. That's why I'm much more likely to advance the arguments put forth by Project 515, or labor leader Javier Morillo-Alicea, about the costs of anti-LGBT legislation to Minnesota than to dwell on hatefulness.

MPR reports about the economic costs of a same-sex marriage ban:

"With Minnesota competing or talent in other states and countries, a same-sex marriage ban would put the state at a competitive disadvantage," said Ann Kaner-Roth, executive director of Project 515. The group works to ensure that same-sex couples and their families have equal rights and considerations under Minnesota law.

Roth said many Minnesota companies already provide domestic partner benefits to their employees. She hopes to convince them to get more involved in the marriage issue.

"The corporate community has seen the value of creating an inclusive culture, and we hope that they'll bring that message to the Legislature," Roth said. "The public has been very clear in saying that they want to see the Legislature focus on jobs and the economy, and that is the key focus right now."

Stomp on the tolerant communities prefered by the creative class, and pay the price for a  marriage monoculture.

It's not just the hate; it's the imbecility.

Photo: Marcus and Michele Bachmann at the Time influential people gala. Because everyone should have a marriage like Bachmann, who first spawned the marriage amendment while serving in the Minnesota senate, and her husband, "a Christian mental-health-therapist-helper-counselor who can wash that gay right out of your hair?" (April 26, 2011 - Photo by PacificCoastNews.com)

Bleg: Like Bluestem's investigative blogging? Drop some coin in the tip jar

Not long at Bluestem started in mid-July 2006, the blog drew national attention to Tim Walz’s triumph over then-Representative Gil Gutknecht at their first head-to-head debate. A writer at Daily Kos used the coverage to explore why local blogging matters.

Since then, story after story has first appeared here, as well as commentary about news from Greater Minnesota that often pushes rural life and politics toward a broader audience.

Think for a moment about items that first appeared on the little blog on the prairie. Emmer’s mortgages. Buesgens' home foreclosure. Quist’s political resurrection. The NRCC’s lifting of a slogan for an anti-depressant in a much-ridiculed attempt at re-branding. Randy Demmer’s abuse of the per diem system while attending NRCC candidates' school in DC. 

Story after story has broken at Bluestem, which runs on my own dime and tips from individual readers. Since the breaking of the Giefer pardon story on Sunday, November 28, people have been asking how they might help with the investigative work Bluestem provides for progressive causes in Minnesota.

The answer is simple: leave a holiday tip for Bluestem Prairie.

Want more research and blogging from this site? Contribute via Bluestem’s tip jar. All contributions will go toward keeping Bluestem going by paying the expenses for the site and  for research projects.  I enjoy a frugal life in rural Minnesota, and will use each dollar carefully as I pursue leads and story ideas.

Can you spare a few dollars to help fund the best little blog on the prairie? Not comfortable with the tip jar? Email me for an address where contributions can be sent.

Thank you,

Sally Jo Sorensen

P.S. I continue to appreciate news tips as well; the Giefer pardon research started with a reader's tip.

Digimodernist politics: Robert Erickson, Ryan Flugaur and the importance of being earnest

Philosophers tell us that one of the hallmark signs of digimodernism is its earnestness as its creators ride the whirlwind of the modern world. Alan Kirby wrote that the triumph of computerization creates a new paradigm:

new form of textuality characterized in its purest, instances by onwardness, haphazardness, evanescence, and anonymous, social and multiple authorship. These in turn become the hallmarks of a group of texts in new and established modes which also manifest the digimodernist traits of infantilism, earnestness, endlessness and apparent reality.

Looking at political discourse online this overcast Pentecost afternoon, I find indeed that all that is solid melts into pixels.

Take, for instance, the art and text of the endorsement video. In all seriousness, two parallel examples of endorsement videos for Tom Emmer underscore Kirby's point.

Let us start with the YouTube with the most views. By the standards of the Tom Emmer for Governor Youtube channel, Robert Erickson's citizen endorsement is a hit with over 600 hits, as the most views any other video has received is Jack Tomzcak at 381, with Representative Laura Brod as a close second with 358 people.

The second--Ryan Flugaur's citizen endorsement of Tom Emmer-- is part of the large group of  endorsement videos assembled at Emmer's YouTube channel:

Discipline, punish & Flip-video: a Tea Party Panopticon

The Strib included this gem from a speaker at yesterday's Tea Party Express stop in St. Paul:

Mark Skoda, a member of the Memphis Tea Party, warned the crowd that opponents will try to infiltrate upcoming anti-tax rallies. He urged people to buy small video cameras to document Tea Party events so "you know who's next to you."

Many pixels have burned as pundits, journalists and others try to decipher the discourse formation of the Tea Party Movement. Once instruments for disseminating the anger and anti-government message of the protests, video cameras will now evolve into a medium for control.

In short, the gatherings' own self-induced paniopticon. Jeremy Bentham would be proud of the use of technology, though probably not impressed by the rest of it.

Campaign trail humor: Lorraine and the Tracker

The Republican Party of Minnesota is spending a lot of resources on tracking and trashing the field of DFL gubernatorial candidates. The best work being done to debunk the distortions about the record of Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak can be found at Ed Kohler's site, The Deets.

Kohler explains with exacting precision why the MNGOP and its chief blogger can't handle the deets. He's also doing a fine job exposing the work of  Republicans echo chamber tweeps as well.

For a more light-hearted look behind the Republican oppo machine, I present "Lorraine and the Tracker," an incident on the campaign trail in New Prague.

I'd mentioned to a Rybak campaign consultant that I'd overheard an older woman talking about how she wanted to make sure a certain young man with a camera tried the kolaches at Patty's Place. Turns out that was RT's mother. I later discovered I videotaped the incident.

Disclosure: New media contract with the Minnesota DFL

I've always promised readers that I'll disclose any assistance, contracts, or other renumeration that thics would suggest need to be transparent in order for reader to assess the work here.

One such project has come my way: I am now consulting on New Media training and strategy for the DFL. Hence, the following disclosure will appear in a sidebar my designer will be adding to Bluestem:

Sally Jo Sorensen, editor and proprietor of Bluestem Prairie, serves as a New Media training and strategy consultant for the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party.

However, all of the statements, opinions, and views expressed on this site by Sorensen are solely her own, save when she attributes them to other sources, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Minnesota DFL, its staff, officers, elected officials, candidates, donors, precinct chairs, volunteers, and senate district and county unit officers and directors.

The opinions, statements, and views of contributing writers are their own.

This web site is not a production of the DFL, and the DFL does not necessarily support or endorse any of the contents on this site. 

The work doesn't involve any blogging for the party.

Under a prairie rose: reflections on June 4 and recent memory

Twenty years ago in late May, I went to Green Forest, Arkansas, with my fellow graduate student CJ, to conduct a two-day Poets in the Schools workshop in the local junior high

Since Green Forest was rumored to be a hornets' nest of Klan activity and my colleague was a young man from Shanghai. I fretted about what might befall us on the trip in his rickety Chevy Vega into the miasmatic jungles of Arkansas, fears that loomed even larger when we got a flat in the back country.

But there were no hooded boys on the stretch of road those days, and the greatest terror I livedthrough was listening to a tape of Neil Diamond clunk through its endless loop on CJ's 8-track player, a relic even then.

The students' reaction to our PITS team drew from events unfolding a world away in CJ's homeland. Suddenly, for them, there stood before them a Chinese student, like those they had been seeing via satellite since April, protesting as part of the Chinese democracy movement in the streets of Beijing.