What's Happening to Block E?

I know, this is a more local post, but it really irks me that GameWorks is leaving the Block E development in Downtown Minneapolis.
To give a little background, several years ago, a development was built across the street from Target Center, that included a hotel. It was designed to revitalize the entertainment district in downtown.
One of its anchors, Borders Books, already closed a couple years ago. And, it appears that GameWorks, another anchor, is going to follow suit.
In a letter to the editor published in the Minneapolis StarTribune today, the writer suggested they tear down Block E, move the Schubert Theatre there, relocate a bar, and plant trees where the Theatre stands now. In essence, his message was, put everything back the way it was in 1998.
What bothers me, is that Target Field opens in less than a year. There are no restaurants in close proximity to the stadium. Block E seems that it would have been a perfect pre- or post-game spot. Target Field, walk across 394 on Target Plaza, walk past Target Center, and there you are. Hard Rock Cafe and all.
It is unfortunate. Hopefully things will start to look up again for the Block E development. I would assume, that the Graves601 Hotel that is a part of that development will be the preferred hotel for opposing teams when they come to town.
What else would there be for the players to do in their free-time, if the arcade is shut down? God forbid you go over to CityCenter. There's nothing to do there either. I think the owners of GameWorks should have waited it out, to see if the ballpark would have created any new customers.
And, if all goes well, and the Twins score the 2014 MLB All Star Game, who knows what Block E could have provided for all the folks that come to town for that as well.
I guess we will never know.

Thanks for reading.

A bailout, of journalism?

This one caught me by surprise. A couple days ago, I read an editorial in the Minneapolis Star Tribune that was re-printed from the Los Angeles Times. Apparently, this was Rosa Brooks' "last article" for the Times before embarking on a new job in Washington DC.

Essentially, she's asking for a bailout, of the newspaper industry. Yes, after the housing crunch, the banking crunch, the auto industry crunch, she says that newspapers need some cash, too.

And, yes, look around and newspapers everywhere are closing, soon to close, in eminent danger of closing, or declaring bankruptcy, as the Star Tribune did several months ago. So, on that front, she's right.

But, her article seems to claim that newspapers are the only place people get their news. She asks, "how will we recognize, or hope to forestall...pending [crises]?" She asks other questions very similar on other issues, including Iraq. I ask, are newspapers really that popular? Even Howard Beale, the iconic newsman in the 1970s classic "Network" screams at his viewing audience by saying, "less than HALF of you read newspapers!"

I read newspapers daily, as part of my job. Every once in a while, I'll go to the newspaper stand on the corner and buy one. However, some of the more interesting news stories you read, are the ones that don't fall into the category of "all the news that's fit to print," or maybe, there isn't enough room to print. They are the stories you'll find on Google News, Reuters and other Web sites like them.

I read through her editorial, and I included the link so you can as well, but I read through it hoping that she was talking "tongue and cheek." I hope she seriously didn't believe what she was saying. And, I know that the "yapping heads that dominate cable 'news'," as she so eloquently puts it, talk all the time about the "socialism" that seems to be creeping it's way into this country by all these governement bailouts. Let me ask, if the government did in fact bailout the newspapers, what then?

Would the government then dictate what is "fit to print?" That's just what we need, state-run media. Please understand, that was a sarcastic statement. We don't need government to bail out newspapers. Times are changing, the means by which people get their news are changing. You can simply use your cellphone to get news. Who needs a newspaper, that costs anywhere from a quarter to a dollar, when they can get it for free on the Internet?

Which leads me to an interesting poll I found on the website of the Twin Cities Business Journal (www.twincities.bizjournals.com). The poll question is as follows: Should people pay to read stories online? As of April 14, at 5:50 PM CDT, only 26% of respondants said "yes." Another 28% said "sometimes." Of course, in many cases, if you want to find archived articles, they are "pay-as-you-go." And, more and more newspapers are launching "E-ditions." Both Twin Cities newspapers offer electronic editions that are the exact same as the print edition. And, just as with the print edition, there is a subscription price.

Maybe it's the generation we're in. Society does things differently than they did 30 years ago. However, I believe that there is enough of an appetite in the general public for printed news. Believe it or not, there are people who are tired of the "yapping heads" on TV, and would rather read their news in print. More power to them. And, unlike online news, you can always save a clipping, and go back to it years down the road. Try finding a story that's twenty years old or more, online, for free. I'll bet it can't be done.

While newspapers are in fact sizing down, they're just going with the times. However, I still believe that if they print it, people will read. I think Ms. Brooks is wrong by saying that there needs to be a "journalism bailout." I think she's wrong when she seems to imply that newspapers will become nothing more than a paper filled with, "ads, entertainment features and crossword puzzles." The news is still the news, no matter how you tell it, and people will get it.

Thanks for reading.

Rosa Brooks' article can be found here:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-brooks9-2009apr09,0,7379164.column

Sports writing - a thing of the past?

Recently, I read an article in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) that shocked me a little, but not as much as I thought. The article ran in the April 7, 2009 issue in the sports section. It was titled, "Baseball Writers Brace for the End." The image is from 1962, a packed pressbox at Yankee Stadium.

The article goes on to tell how pressboxes at ballparks are getting emptier. Jack O'Connell, who is the secretary of the Baseball Writers Association of America was quoted in the article as saying, "I certainly see the dark clouds," in regards to the future of baseball beat writers.

But, what about other sports? Maybe it was just me, but at last weekend's NCAA Final Four in Detroit, I didn't see as many spots on press row as usual. Sure, maybe I didn't notice because the Final Four setup places the floor on a 14-inch-high platform, therefore press row seems to be in an orchestra pit. In past years, usually there are three rows of press tables along both sides of the floor. This year, I only saw two on either side.

The WSJ article went on to talk about the Beaver County Times, a paper published just outside of Pittsburgh, and that the paper is no longer covering Pittsburgh Pirates spring training, and is covering only a limited schedule of road games. The paper quoted the New York Times as spending $6,500 a month to cover the team on the road (the WSJ did not specify whether it was the Yankees or the Mets). And a trade-off seems to be in order in the nation's capital: the Washington Post will rely on the Baltimore Sun for coverage of the Baltimore Orioles; and the Post will rely on the Sun for coverage of the Washington Nationals.

This is just baseball. Of course, a baseball season is twice as long as an NHL or NBA season (162 games for Major League Baseball), so will this become something that happens to other sports coverage as well? Who knows? The WSJ article quoted Mark Cuban, the young, iconic owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks, who wrote in his blog recently that for newspapers to "die" would be a "recipe for disaster." Cuban believes that newspapers are the NBA's best medium to reach a large audience; and the decline as of late for newspapers can also hurt a team's marketing.

Here's one interesting statistic the WSJ wrote about papers in Detroit. Both of the city's newspapers (Detroit News, Detroit Free-Press) have cut their home delivery to three days a week. The Detroit Red Wings of the NHL conducted a survey, and they found that 65% of the team's season-ticket holders get their news from the newspaper.

So, maybe some good news still remains for sports beat writers in our local daily newspapers. But with the increasing use of social-networking sites, blogs and other user-created mediums, the president of the Baseball Writers Association of America might not be too far-fetched when he was quoted as saying, "We're waiting for that first domino to fall...."

You can read the full WSJ article by clicking on this link: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123906424665995337.html.

I apologize to any of my readers if you have been unable to post comments on this blog. In re-vamping the look of my blog recently, I discovered that the comment posting permissions weren't set correctly. It has been rectified and you should be able to comment without having to be a "registered user."

Thanks for reading.

Same URL, different name

Well, I think I've come up with something that is unique, and exemplifies the manner in which I hope to write.

I've always liked the word "treatise." Go ahead, check it out in the MS Word thesaurus, you know you want to. It's an older word that has been replaced of late as a written discourse, thesis or dissertation. The first time I heard it was on an episode of Cheers, the eminent psychiatrist Frasier Crane was discussing a paper that he wrote during his days at Oxford University, and described it using the word "treatise." I thought it sounded different and unique.

I even had to check the word in the dictionary, just to make sure the Charles brothers (Glen and Les, writers of Cheers) weren't just yanking our chains when they put that word in that particular episode's script.

The URL for my blog will stay the same. I didn't want to set up another blog, just so I could get the cool URL. So, I remain at http://lukesdiscussions.blogspot.com.

I hope the new name doesn't confuse anyone. Hopefully my faithful followers will like the change.
I thought I could either do "The Treatise," or if I really wanted to have some fun, "L'auteur heureux." French for,"The Happy Writer," roughly translated of course.

One year from now...

Within the next 365 days, the Twins will be relocating to open-air Target Field. After years of struggling to get a new ballpark, the dream will become reality next spring.

I'm still trying to figure out how outdoor baseball will work here in Minnesota. And given that now the last two years, the first couple days of April has brought unseasonable cold, and wet snow, I'm really concerned. I'm part of a generation that doesn't remember Met Stadium, but remembers watching baseball under a teflon roof, played on AstroTurf; making for a guaranteed opening day without fear of cancellation. And, let's not forget about games in late September/early October (or even later if we have a playoff-bound team).

I wish I had statistics on opening days whilst at the Met from 1961-1981. It can be cold, rainy and sometimes snowy during the first week of April in these parts. I've always told myself that Kansas City, Saint Louis, both Chicagos and Boston, just to name a few, can have wild weather this time of year too, and those locales do just fine with open-air ballparks.

Recently on my Facebook account, I posted a muse that someone told me was funny, the way The Onion is funny. Some highlights included:

April 1 - For the third year in a row, snow and cold befalls upon Minnesota. 15 inches of snow to be exact. Therefore, the Twins' home opener at Target Field is delayed. The last time the Twins "delayed" a game was Aug. 2, 2007, after the bridge collapse.

April 9 - A small flood befalls Target Field now because of all the melting snow. The Twins are seriously considering moving to Dallas.

April 13 - The Twins figure that games may not be played at all at Target Field at least until June 1, to allow time to repair all the damage. The Twins drop the Dallas talks and talk about moving BACK to the Metrodome.

April 27 - After lying to everybody about how great Target Field was going to be, the Twins immediately tear off the Inaugural Season sleeve patches in a rousing ceremony at the Metrodome in front of approximately 1,000 people. The Twins lose their "Target Field home opener" 4-2 to the Boston Red Sox.

April 28 - Dave St. Peter scratches his head and thinks to himself, "What in holy heck just happened here?"

Apparently, I'm not the only one who wonders what next year will bring. The Minneapolis StarTribune had a rather lengthy article on April 2, detailing the opening day temperatures for the last 27 years, the number of years the Twins have played indoors. The warmest opening day whilst at the Dome was April 8, 1988 with a high of 77. The coldest opening day was a mere six years ago, April 4, 2003 with a bone-chilling 29 as a high.

And this morning (April 3), in Charley Walters' column in the PioneerPress, the last segment of his column read as follows, "Jerry Bell, president of Twins Sports Inc., asked about the weather if the Twins open Target Field next year at this time: 'The answer is that we won't be playing at home a year from now. We'll be on the road for at least six games. We thought of that too."

So, let's just put that in perspective. The 2009 Major League (MLB) season opens Sunday, April 5, and the Twins "Dome Opener" is Monday, April 6. So, let's figure those six games Bell spoke of: two three-game series', one day to travel to the first city, another to travel to the next, then the last day to travel home. So, we're looking at a nine-day stretch. Which would mean, if this was next year, the Twins would open Target Field on April 15.

Of course, not every April is cold and dreary like that of this year, last year, or even 2003. However, the Twins can't always guess what it's going to be like, and so they might opt to open on the road every year from 2010 on. I read an article a couple months ago (I think it was another Walters article) saying that teams must apply to MLB well in advance, in order to open on the road. So, either the Twins do that, or opt to play the first couple weeks of the season just like the Cubs played all 81 of their home games prior to Wrigley Field installing lights in 1989: play day games.

Enjoy early home openers while you can, I think we're in for some late ones in the years to come.