Once upon a time in the 1990s of the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, the daily newspapers you chose to read said a lot about you. Just like your preference for Pearl Jam over Nirvana or The Joynt over The Cam. At least it said a lot about you if you were a journalism major.

Twin Cities kids usually split down Mississippi lines with the kids from Minneapolis & the western suburbs choosing the The StarTribune and kids from St. Paul & the eastern suburbs choosing The Pioneer Press. The Wisconsin kids usually went with one of the Twin Cities papers as well one of the Milwaukee or Madison papers. I’m testing my memory here, but I think this might have even been in the days when each of those cities had two papers. The Minneapolis and St. Paul papers had consolidated in the early 80s.

I came from a staunchly STrib home. Even though my dad grew up in a PiPress house and he liked the St. Paul paper, my mom made the newspapers subscription decisions. She still reads the paper every day. Because we were so pro-STrib, I found the PiPress downright exotic. It was blue and pretty and the comics were different. I’d read it whenever we were at any my dad’s brother’s or sister’s houses.

It felt like a tiny form of rebellion to become a PiPress reader when I was in college and making my own newspaper buying decisions. I bought it every day and for that one year I took Russian, I’d forget it in the classroom every day. It’s why, twenty-years later, the only thing I can remember how to say in Russian is “I forgot my newspaper.”

Even though the PiPress was the more politically conservative newspaper, I was secure enough in my radical-leftiness that it didn’t bother me. Plus, they had Jim Walsh and if you don’t know how much and for how long I’ve loved Jim Walsh, well then you don’t know me at all. NOT AT ALL!

Today, the PioneerPress broke my fucking heart by running a poorly-written editorial in support of Minnesota’s bigoted, intolerant marriage amendment.

If you’re not living in Minnesota, you might not be familiar with this issue. See, the chuckle-headed Republicans in our legislature wanted to get social conservatives out to the polls. They thought the perfect way to do that was to put a constitutional amendment on the ballott that would define marriage as between a man and a woman. The intolerance and bigotry astounds and because we like to give bigots as much say as possible we also have a Voter ID initiative on the ballott too, we want to make sure that only good white Republicans vote. So we, the good, kind, rational, tolerant Minnesotans get the opportunity to channel our inner two year old and VOTE NO on these racist and homophobic amendments.

The Minnesota Marriage Amendment is the type of issue that I have a hard time rationally discussing. It’s an issue I feel so strongly about that my passion for it becomes overwhelming and when my emotions get that ramped up the only thing I can do is cry. It’s hard to have a discussion with someone who is crying.

Also, when I think about the Minnesota Marriage Amendment and the people who would possibly vote to limit the freedoms of other people my brain short circuits and that only helps the tears along.

My brain cannot fathom any way to justify limiting the freedom to marriage to heterosexual people. Like I can’t intellectually grasp any logic for this. I can’t understand how people can use the Bible as the reason for their bigotry. I mean, conceptually, I can understand it, but don’t these people realize that our very Constitution says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”

That’s the very first line of the very first amendment. Do they not know what that means? Do they not sit around and thank their lucky stars that the religion they choose to believe in is the “dominate” religion in this country? Do they not realize that if the atheists were in control they’d have to shove their God and their Leviticus and their Adam & Eve right up their tightly clenched assholes? Because they would.

And if they’re so worried about the sanctity of marriage, why don’t they protest every episode of the Bachelor or Bachelorette or you know, Kim Kardashian?

Here’s why I’m VOTING NO on Tuesday: because it’s the right thing to do, because rights should not be voted on, because what two consenting adults do is none of my business, because even though I don’t believe in marriage and loathe the whole Wedding Industrial Complex with an acid-tinged fury I don’t need to push my beliefs onto other people, because we are a better society when everyone is equal, because love is love and like Lenny Kravitz said we got to let love rule, because homosexuals being given the same rights and protections under the law does not take a single right or protection away from me, and because I want to.

Also, because I heard this song The Current at 7 a.m. on Friday morning and while waiting at a stop light it made me bawl my fool head off.

The post The sudden & devastating end of a 20-year love affair appeared first on I Will Dare.

Jodi, the great prognosticator.

It’s my penchant for picking the exact opposite of what will happen that makes me so milquetoasty about Kindles, nooks, and iSlates. Even though I cannot imagine giving up actual books for an e-reader, I will not boldly make that claim lest some jackass come and dig in these here archives to prove me wrong.

Content aggregation presented as news
We’ve all been hearing the death rattle of the newspaper industry/mainstream media for years and years now. We get it, newspapers need to change. News gathering needs to change. Something needs to change. What really needs to change is content aggregators presenting themselves as actual news sources. That’s BULLSHIT. Just because you read the AP Newswire or 48 more news sources than I do does not make your link and paraphrasing of the original story news. Not at all. If you get on the horn (using the old-fashioned phone or newfangled e-mail/IM) and gather up your own new information about that story you’re paraphrasing, then I’ll call that news. Until then you’re really just a locally-focused MetaFilter with less interesting content. Got it?

Writing about Social Media
STOP THE MADNESS. Really, just stop. Everybody just stop. I beg you. I had to sift through roughly 260 blog posts about customer experience and customer service for a client today and (no exaggeration) 105 of them were related to Social Media. Fuck that noise. Those posts aren’t helping anyone. They aren’t adding to the “conversation” that’s allegedly so important to every marketer on the planet. After December 31, 2009 any article about Social Media is going to be considered noise (or worse, SPAM).

Music/Book/Design Blogs that lack a point of view
I recently ranted about the musicbloggers, and I just wanted to reiterate it. What’s the point of having a blog about your passion, whatever that may be, if you’re not going to push your point of view all over the place. Isn’t that the point? I don’t give a rat’s ass if some indie band from wherever the “it” place of 2010 is (Ashtabula, Ronkonkoma, King of Prussia) releases a video on YouTube. I want to know what you actually think about the music/books/designs you’re blogging about. (Please see, content aggregation is not news. The same applies to you 99.9% of arts bloggers.)

The post Things that can go the way of the dodo in 2010, part 1 appeared first on I Will Dare.

She told us how the Internet would change the way we worked, reported, and read newspapers. Someday, she said, newspapers might only exist on the Web.

“Pshaw,” I said. Yes, I was 22 and I said pshaw. “People will never give up their actual newspapers. Who’s going to drink their coffee with a computer?”

Yeah. I’ve always been a forward thinker.

In other news, The Star-Tribune has filed for bankruptcy. As much as I love to hate on it (mostly for their invasive advertising), it saddens me to see it going downhill so quickly. Poor, poor Strib.

The post This is why I try to avoid making predictions appeared first on I Will Dare.

until, this morning. while driving in this morning, KS95 had Kirk Anderson on. apparently knight-ridder saw fit to oust kirk because the 18-25% profit margin just wasn’t quite enough for the shareholders. apparently having a local editorial cartoonist isn’t important to the hometown paper. it all sickens me. i am OUTRAGED that the Pi-Press let him go. i’ve loved kirk since he was drawing for the onion way back in the day before the onion was a dotcom phenom.

it just saddens me that the newspaper business has become more business and less newspaper. and it makes me a little happy that i got before my soul was completely destroyed.

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