The fight between Republicans and Democrats is akin to asymmetrical warfare. As Democrats refuse to stoop to the level of Republicans' misleading portrayals and outright lies, they are losing the war. Propaganda is effective with a large part of the population.
How do Dems even the playing field? I hope they don't decide to spew their own version of propaganda.
If Dems truly developed messages where everyone were to be "treated as equals," I don't know if it would be enough, but it would be a good start. Many, many examples where the far left wants DEI for everyone, as long as they're not part of a "privileged" group. This angers the right, and provides them all the incentive and ammo they need. It's not just the right that are disaffected. There is a huge portion of the center who wants systems that embrace equal opportunity for all, not a focus on equal outcome. If you want evidence this is true, look at perhaps the most liberal state, California. They resoundingly banned affirmative action for the public sector with Prop 209.
I want to see the equality gaps shrink and hopefully disappear. But we have to go about it the right way. Those using outcome as a measure of equal opportunity are inadvertently sinking their own ship.
Terry, Since I know you and read you regularly, I'm guessing you "get" the following point, but since it's somewhat obscured in today's piece, I want to underline it anyway: Everything you lament in this piece can be considered contemporary media/political TACTICS. Complaining about what has become of our tactics may have some validity, but does not change the BIG issue, which is that Minnesota has a very SUBSTANTIVE and STILL largely un-addressed government programs multi-fraud problem. I have been astounded for well over a year that what happened in the last few weeks, "nationalizing" the discussion, took THIS LONG to occur.
Like you, I had contact with close relatives in distant places over these Holidays. UNLIKE you, I was not once asked what I thought of the video. What they DID ask, was what was going on in Minnesota with all these intertwining government program frauds, and the seeming inability or unwillingness of MN authorities to deal with it in anything resembling a timely and/or effective way. Yes, the video was WHY their own local media outlets were obsessing over the story, but most people are pretty aware of what "drives the train" for news media today, so my relatives, to a one, understood that the "real" story was not this one new video, but lots and lots of under-addressed fraud that already, today, extends back over five years (with hints, as you wrote, that go back even farther).
In other words, they were not obsessing over the tactic that made it all go viral this holiday season... they were stunned by the actual underlying STORY that they had previously been largely unaware of.
I had thought that this was going to happen last summer, when Walz was nominated for V.P. I was amazed that it did not. I asked a few Chicago area relatives, then, what they knew about Walz's problems back home, and basically, some had heard there was "something", but more had not heard anything. I think many of us who are "into" politics over-estimate just how much info and/or mis-info and propaganda "normal" people consume...
I was disappointed to read that your first instinct was defensive. I hope you don't also "go defensive" when a distant cousin from out-of-town opines that the Twins suck because the owners are cheap....! Like the government-programs-fraud issue, it's not YOU they're questioning, and there is no denying it's TRUE, so being defensive isn't helpful...! One needs to guard against that kind of reaction!
I hope you'll keep your focus on the real story - we have a significant and under-addressed multiple-frauds problem. Don't be distracted by the "gotcha" videos of one side OR the nit-picky "here's what's wrong in the video(s)" arguments of the other side. The former is meant only to propagandize, and the latter to distract. There is a REAL problem here, and it needs to be solved. We all need to keep our eye on the ball.
I’m certainly not forgetting or ignoring: “the BIG issue, which is that Minnesota has a very SUBSTANTIVE and STILL largely un-addressed government programs multi-fraud problem.”
There will be more to come on that front, U. S. Attorney Joe Thompson has indicated as much. More will be written about the fraud taking place. For this edition of the newsletter, I wanted to focus on the media tactics.
It concerns me to watch individuals being incentivized to create rage bait. It doesn’t lead to quality reporting or solutions and makes it confusing when trying to determine what deserves attention and what is pure nonsense. For example, there are people out there now proclaiming that Walz had Melissa Hortman assassinated. In fact, the President of the United States has circulated this conspiracy theory! Stories like these get traction and generate a lot of attention, which means people create more of them.
As someone that is trying to create quality content, the media universe, and how it is funded, is of great interest to me. It impacts how people see the world and what facts are deemed relevant. It is a struggle to find funding to write stories that aren’t intended for the sole purpose of generating outrage or amplifying the perspective of the funder. Think tanks that have newsletters and podcasts like American Experiment have an agenda they are pushing. KSTP is said to be right-wing. The Star Tribune seems to be criticized by everyone.
Where do you recommend people go if they want to learn about what is happening locally?
The state has been failing to establish effective controls, and your own tax money gets used against you 24/7 to keep it that way. And then people petition the government in various ways or bring costly and exhausting lawsuits that go nowhere. People get cease and desist letters from fraudsters. People support candidates and representatives who can only do so much and who get ground into the pavement by criminals. So, oh, I'm here for all the money being cut off and all the cockroaches coming out into the light. Because more and more, the services were being stolen out from under people. And not just by Somalis (though they've done an exemplary job) but by everyone who sees the tax dollars and thinks they already own them. Such as RW Baird, Kraus-Anderson, BWBR. We need more and more fraud conversations.
The right had to do something, their voice was successfully squelched for years. Just look at the response to the Shirley video, it was all about discrediting the whistle-blower, not about the fraud. Yes he is right-wing, but his message was honest, the fraud being committed today is from the same template as "feeding our children". Nothing has changed. I have gone by a couple of these questionable daycares daily and was surprised they were actual active businesses, that is how little activity I see in them. Now we have the paid care leave act where anyone can take off to take care of anyone for virtually anything. No worries there either. I am so glad the Feds shut dow the money because our own local government doesn't seem to get it. I suspect that MN may also have taken some liberties with the federal funds for social services, allotting it to more people than it was legislated for which could be a much bigger problem.
If this fraud is not enough the right has had to endure years of being unheard, slandered and insulted just for being successful and wealthy. These insults still occur daily on most of the news feeds and it's so ingrained that most people do not even see it. At some point we have to realize that the current 2 parties are not that different and if we actually listen, really listen we know that are asking for the same thing with minor variances.
I do think our local Socialist leaders might want to take a step back because for good or bad the Feds are comming to town to look for the money and I think they are going to find it.
Are you advocating for a third party? It seems a different system might get us out of this rut. For example, an open primary where the top 4 candidates move to the final ballot. We might also want to reconsider the caucus and endorsement process.
I am actually a Democratic but the only people who seem to know that are Republicans. What I am not is a Socialist, I want them out of the Democratic party and news media. The reason this fraud video went viral across the country is because the Republicans took their voice back with X, prior to that none of the national news media was picking up on our fraud beyond a single small piece or 2. If that is not enough the Socialists won't let anyone express an opinion that varies from their own without a fight. What did Walz do all summer, he traveled the country with OC insulting the Republicans continually calling them Nazis and fascists. This new MN Democratic party has become anything but inclusive and actually pretty close to what they are blaming the Republicans as being. I really do not understand it. Everyone keeps saying the Republicans are making it up and lying but I am not seeing it. I see the Democratic party saying we need equal and fair, we need to be generous, but are they really? Some of DEI says that everyone becomes successful from luck rather than intelligence or skill. Now there is so much fraud I wonder if anyone at all is being assisted at all. They are more anti business and wealth than ever but look how rich many of the leaders are becoming. Sory to rant, but.....
Terry, You raise several good points in your reply, and asked a GREAT question.
* Rage bait doesn't lead to quality, or solutions, or help one determine what deserves attention. I agree.
* American Experiment; KSTP = Right Wing.
I agree. The latter, not so much as the former, or so much as to be a local equivalent of national Fox News, but they are palpably right of center.
* Star Trib criticized by everyone.
Yep. And for good reasons. My take is they are not clearly on "either side" but are so badly edited that individual writers are not appropriately guided and/or reined in - and for any one writer it can vary from article to article. This has been a problem of theirs literally for decades. It far predates their current top editors and Publisher Grove, who takes heat from all sides for many things. I think somewhere along the line, lack of attention to keeping INDIVIDUALS on staff from going "past the line" in any given piece became institutional for them. It has been a long time now that they haven't seemed to realize that having some employees writing oddly - even poorly - is neither impartial nor "balanced", even if it sometimes happens right-coded and sometimes left-coded - it's just poor editorial control. I'll site a trivial example that I know at least some Strib readers will relate to. Until a few months ago, they were employing a restaurant critic who could literally not write on a high school sophomore level - and all the Strib did about it (until they mercifully cashiered him) was to censor any attempts to criticize his writing in the comments. This has just become "who they are" at the Strib. One can still enjoy the paper and be informed by it if one can keep in mind that pieces are frequently poorly edited.
All this begs a question, though. If one agrees with me that the Minnesota multi-fraud should have been a national story at least a year ago, and perhaps FIVE years ago; and if one also acknowledges that it took this December's viral stunt to MAKE it so... well... How CAN or SHOULD a story of this level of importance get "escalated" in the current environment? Never mind the disputed dollar amounts, the disputed "How many fraudsters were there?" arguments, the "Has the Walz admin done enough in reaction?" or "...acted fast enough?" angles. This story, in an ideal news environment, should have gone national over HOW EASY it indisputably was for the fraudsters to get "money for nothing" and with nobody checking anything. In what used to be called "The Good Government State". That alone. In the 2020's, MN has state programs that allow one to set up a sham shop and literally "order money" from the state, with less oversight than you would insist on if I asked you for a loan as a friend. So, if we don't want escalating something like that to the national stage to require a viral stunt, what other mechanism IS available?
Finally, your great question: "Where do you recommend people go if they want to learn about what is happening locally?" My answer is that one can NOT rely on ANY one-stop shop. If you like KSTP, you need to be aware that it is right-leaning, and you need to go out of your way to get some news exposure from someplace that is left-leaning. NPR/MPR maybe. (And don't get me started on the fact that the head of NPR still insists they have NO bias. I have listened to MPR/NPR for DECADES because I KNOW that they DO. I just don't rely on them as if it were all unvarnished truth...) As a lifelong "liberal" Dem, I've found that I get good value for my "seeking balance" time, on local stuff, by habitually reading the much-reviled ALPHA. Every. Single. Day.
They do a few things that are really helpful to developing one's sense of what is, or at least may be, true, even though it is being said - for now - only on the right. I'll outline just two. One is that several (not all) of their writers are very good at the "just the facts" article. Do I mean that all the facts are true? No... I mean those writers write pieces that are relatively devoid of opinion, sometimes even of interpretation. They do this largely when the set of facts they are laying out would cause any rational human to draw the right-coded conclusion! But in a world where opinion is often masquerading as fact, this style of writing can be illuminating. The second thing is that they are just pervasive enough and objectionable-to-the-left enough that their pieces almost always draw responses from multiple left-leaning sources. The discerning reader can learn a LOT about whether the "facts" in an ALPHA article are true or not by paying attention to whether the article is attacked by anybody in a logical, objective way, or whether the critique(s) boil down to "..it was in ALPHA, so it must be false". I can't begin to tell you how many times I have learned something new about an issue I thought I already understood, because ALPHA wrote something I (and others) thought was outrageous, but, even over time, it went un-rebutted substantively - even while being derided repeatedly just for being "from ALPHA".
I would imagine that any right-leaning person could write mirror image advice, using different outlets as examples.
The general technique works in a lot of contexts. For example, if you are signed up for and read your DFL State Rep's and State Senator's constituent newsletters (and you should be!), sign up for a few Republicans, too. (Surprisingly, no one on either side of the aisle cares if you are actually a constituent or not. For House members, signing up is easy, for Senate, less so, but do-able.) As a politics junkie, I am signed up for dozens, from both sides of the aisle. I don't read them all, every time, of course. Only Subject lines that grab me, and/or Legislators that I know write good ones. Many just copy-and-paste "boilerplate" from their party's Caucus staff. You don't want those - they're a waste of time. At the risk of angering many of my DFL friends, I can tell you that the GOP one that I think is the best of their lot is St. Rep. and current Gubernatorial candidate Kristin Robbins. Nothing in hers ever shows up in anyone else's, so I'm sure it's written by her or a member of her staff (as opposed to GOP Caucus staff), and she doesn't call DFLers names (many GOP'ers DO...) and she lays out her arguments for her positions very clearly. I don't worry (too much!) about her winning the GOP nomination for Governor because she is far too rational for the GOP caucus/convention/primary base...!
The point is that one has to get out of one's information bubble, and even then, one has to read critically, know the difference between an actual rebuttal and an ad-hominem attack, etc. So the answer to your question, Terry, is "no one place is good enough - not even Terry's "Better Minneapolis'!"
I actually found kstp to be the only regular news I find tolerable but I believe they lean left despite recently trying to be independent. I have been watching Almanac but it seems they are giving up on the idea of being unbiased. I occasionally watch fox family to see the other side, it's like watching news in a different country since it differs so much from all the others. Luckily I think I have a good head for finding the balance between. It would be nice to see more programs trying to be independent but I wonder if they ever really were. Perhaps if there was just less name calling.
Well written, Terry.
The fight between Republicans and Democrats is akin to asymmetrical warfare. As Democrats refuse to stoop to the level of Republicans' misleading portrayals and outright lies, they are losing the war. Propaganda is effective with a large part of the population.
How do Dems even the playing field? I hope they don't decide to spew their own version of propaganda.
If Dems truly developed messages where everyone were to be "treated as equals," I don't know if it would be enough, but it would be a good start. Many, many examples where the far left wants DEI for everyone, as long as they're not part of a "privileged" group. This angers the right, and provides them all the incentive and ammo they need. It's not just the right that are disaffected. There is a huge portion of the center who wants systems that embrace equal opportunity for all, not a focus on equal outcome. If you want evidence this is true, look at perhaps the most liberal state, California. They resoundingly banned affirmative action for the public sector with Prop 209.
I want to see the equality gaps shrink and hopefully disappear. But we have to go about it the right way. Those using outcome as a measure of equal opportunity are inadvertently sinking their own ship.
Thank you, Mike. The Democrats are behind in terms of knowing what agenda to promote and how. We will see if they figure it out by the midterms.
Terry, Since I know you and read you regularly, I'm guessing you "get" the following point, but since it's somewhat obscured in today's piece, I want to underline it anyway: Everything you lament in this piece can be considered contemporary media/political TACTICS. Complaining about what has become of our tactics may have some validity, but does not change the BIG issue, which is that Minnesota has a very SUBSTANTIVE and STILL largely un-addressed government programs multi-fraud problem. I have been astounded for well over a year that what happened in the last few weeks, "nationalizing" the discussion, took THIS LONG to occur.
Like you, I had contact with close relatives in distant places over these Holidays. UNLIKE you, I was not once asked what I thought of the video. What they DID ask, was what was going on in Minnesota with all these intertwining government program frauds, and the seeming inability or unwillingness of MN authorities to deal with it in anything resembling a timely and/or effective way. Yes, the video was WHY their own local media outlets were obsessing over the story, but most people are pretty aware of what "drives the train" for news media today, so my relatives, to a one, understood that the "real" story was not this one new video, but lots and lots of under-addressed fraud that already, today, extends back over five years (with hints, as you wrote, that go back even farther).
In other words, they were not obsessing over the tactic that made it all go viral this holiday season... they were stunned by the actual underlying STORY that they had previously been largely unaware of.
I had thought that this was going to happen last summer, when Walz was nominated for V.P. I was amazed that it did not. I asked a few Chicago area relatives, then, what they knew about Walz's problems back home, and basically, some had heard there was "something", but more had not heard anything. I think many of us who are "into" politics over-estimate just how much info and/or mis-info and propaganda "normal" people consume...
I was disappointed to read that your first instinct was defensive. I hope you don't also "go defensive" when a distant cousin from out-of-town opines that the Twins suck because the owners are cheap....! Like the government-programs-fraud issue, it's not YOU they're questioning, and there is no denying it's TRUE, so being defensive isn't helpful...! One needs to guard against that kind of reaction!
I hope you'll keep your focus on the real story - we have a significant and under-addressed multiple-frauds problem. Don't be distracted by the "gotcha" videos of one side OR the nit-picky "here's what's wrong in the video(s)" arguments of the other side. The former is meant only to propagandize, and the latter to distract. There is a REAL problem here, and it needs to be solved. We all need to keep our eye on the ball.
Hi Jim,
I’m certainly not forgetting or ignoring: “the BIG issue, which is that Minnesota has a very SUBSTANTIVE and STILL largely un-addressed government programs multi-fraud problem.”
There will be more to come on that front, U. S. Attorney Joe Thompson has indicated as much. More will be written about the fraud taking place. For this edition of the newsletter, I wanted to focus on the media tactics.
It concerns me to watch individuals being incentivized to create rage bait. It doesn’t lead to quality reporting or solutions and makes it confusing when trying to determine what deserves attention and what is pure nonsense. For example, there are people out there now proclaiming that Walz had Melissa Hortman assassinated. In fact, the President of the United States has circulated this conspiracy theory! Stories like these get traction and generate a lot of attention, which means people create more of them.
As someone that is trying to create quality content, the media universe, and how it is funded, is of great interest to me. It impacts how people see the world and what facts are deemed relevant. It is a struggle to find funding to write stories that aren’t intended for the sole purpose of generating outrage or amplifying the perspective of the funder. Think tanks that have newsletters and podcasts like American Experiment have an agenda they are pushing. KSTP is said to be right-wing. The Star Tribune seems to be criticized by everyone.
Where do you recommend people go if they want to learn about what is happening locally?
Thanks, Terry
The state has been failing to establish effective controls, and your own tax money gets used against you 24/7 to keep it that way. And then people petition the government in various ways or bring costly and exhausting lawsuits that go nowhere. People get cease and desist letters from fraudsters. People support candidates and representatives who can only do so much and who get ground into the pavement by criminals. So, oh, I'm here for all the money being cut off and all the cockroaches coming out into the light. Because more and more, the services were being stolen out from under people. And not just by Somalis (though they've done an exemplary job) but by everyone who sees the tax dollars and thinks they already own them. Such as RW Baird, Kraus-Anderson, BWBR. We need more and more fraud conversations.
I agree that more conversation is needed. Could you explain what you think is going on here: Such as RW Baird, Kraus-Anderson, BWBR.
I'll just summarize as school building construction churning achieved in highly dishonest ways.
The right had to do something, their voice was successfully squelched for years. Just look at the response to the Shirley video, it was all about discrediting the whistle-blower, not about the fraud. Yes he is right-wing, but his message was honest, the fraud being committed today is from the same template as "feeding our children". Nothing has changed. I have gone by a couple of these questionable daycares daily and was surprised they were actual active businesses, that is how little activity I see in them. Now we have the paid care leave act where anyone can take off to take care of anyone for virtually anything. No worries there either. I am so glad the Feds shut dow the money because our own local government doesn't seem to get it. I suspect that MN may also have taken some liberties with the federal funds for social services, allotting it to more people than it was legislated for which could be a much bigger problem.
If this fraud is not enough the right has had to endure years of being unheard, slandered and insulted just for being successful and wealthy. These insults still occur daily on most of the news feeds and it's so ingrained that most people do not even see it. At some point we have to realize that the current 2 parties are not that different and if we actually listen, really listen we know that are asking for the same thing with minor variances.
I do think our local Socialist leaders might want to take a step back because for good or bad the Feds are comming to town to look for the money and I think they are going to find it.
Are you advocating for a third party? It seems a different system might get us out of this rut. For example, an open primary where the top 4 candidates move to the final ballot. We might also want to reconsider the caucus and endorsement process.
I am actually a Democratic but the only people who seem to know that are Republicans. What I am not is a Socialist, I want them out of the Democratic party and news media. The reason this fraud video went viral across the country is because the Republicans took their voice back with X, prior to that none of the national news media was picking up on our fraud beyond a single small piece or 2. If that is not enough the Socialists won't let anyone express an opinion that varies from their own without a fight. What did Walz do all summer, he traveled the country with OC insulting the Republicans continually calling them Nazis and fascists. This new MN Democratic party has become anything but inclusive and actually pretty close to what they are blaming the Republicans as being. I really do not understand it. Everyone keeps saying the Republicans are making it up and lying but I am not seeing it. I see the Democratic party saying we need equal and fair, we need to be generous, but are they really? Some of DEI says that everyone becomes successful from luck rather than intelligence or skill. Now there is so much fraud I wonder if anyone at all is being assisted at all. They are more anti business and wealth than ever but look how rich many of the leaders are becoming. Sory to rant, but.....
Terry, You raise several good points in your reply, and asked a GREAT question.
* Rage bait doesn't lead to quality, or solutions, or help one determine what deserves attention. I agree.
* American Experiment; KSTP = Right Wing.
I agree. The latter, not so much as the former, or so much as to be a local equivalent of national Fox News, but they are palpably right of center.
* Star Trib criticized by everyone.
Yep. And for good reasons. My take is they are not clearly on "either side" but are so badly edited that individual writers are not appropriately guided and/or reined in - and for any one writer it can vary from article to article. This has been a problem of theirs literally for decades. It far predates their current top editors and Publisher Grove, who takes heat from all sides for many things. I think somewhere along the line, lack of attention to keeping INDIVIDUALS on staff from going "past the line" in any given piece became institutional for them. It has been a long time now that they haven't seemed to realize that having some employees writing oddly - even poorly - is neither impartial nor "balanced", even if it sometimes happens right-coded and sometimes left-coded - it's just poor editorial control. I'll site a trivial example that I know at least some Strib readers will relate to. Until a few months ago, they were employing a restaurant critic who could literally not write on a high school sophomore level - and all the Strib did about it (until they mercifully cashiered him) was to censor any attempts to criticize his writing in the comments. This has just become "who they are" at the Strib. One can still enjoy the paper and be informed by it if one can keep in mind that pieces are frequently poorly edited.
All this begs a question, though. If one agrees with me that the Minnesota multi-fraud should have been a national story at least a year ago, and perhaps FIVE years ago; and if one also acknowledges that it took this December's viral stunt to MAKE it so... well... How CAN or SHOULD a story of this level of importance get "escalated" in the current environment? Never mind the disputed dollar amounts, the disputed "How many fraudsters were there?" arguments, the "Has the Walz admin done enough in reaction?" or "...acted fast enough?" angles. This story, in an ideal news environment, should have gone national over HOW EASY it indisputably was for the fraudsters to get "money for nothing" and with nobody checking anything. In what used to be called "The Good Government State". That alone. In the 2020's, MN has state programs that allow one to set up a sham shop and literally "order money" from the state, with less oversight than you would insist on if I asked you for a loan as a friend. So, if we don't want escalating something like that to the national stage to require a viral stunt, what other mechanism IS available?
Finally, your great question: "Where do you recommend people go if they want to learn about what is happening locally?" My answer is that one can NOT rely on ANY one-stop shop. If you like KSTP, you need to be aware that it is right-leaning, and you need to go out of your way to get some news exposure from someplace that is left-leaning. NPR/MPR maybe. (And don't get me started on the fact that the head of NPR still insists they have NO bias. I have listened to MPR/NPR for DECADES because I KNOW that they DO. I just don't rely on them as if it were all unvarnished truth...) As a lifelong "liberal" Dem, I've found that I get good value for my "seeking balance" time, on local stuff, by habitually reading the much-reviled ALPHA. Every. Single. Day.
They do a few things that are really helpful to developing one's sense of what is, or at least may be, true, even though it is being said - for now - only on the right. I'll outline just two. One is that several (not all) of their writers are very good at the "just the facts" article. Do I mean that all the facts are true? No... I mean those writers write pieces that are relatively devoid of opinion, sometimes even of interpretation. They do this largely when the set of facts they are laying out would cause any rational human to draw the right-coded conclusion! But in a world where opinion is often masquerading as fact, this style of writing can be illuminating. The second thing is that they are just pervasive enough and objectionable-to-the-left enough that their pieces almost always draw responses from multiple left-leaning sources. The discerning reader can learn a LOT about whether the "facts" in an ALPHA article are true or not by paying attention to whether the article is attacked by anybody in a logical, objective way, or whether the critique(s) boil down to "..it was in ALPHA, so it must be false". I can't begin to tell you how many times I have learned something new about an issue I thought I already understood, because ALPHA wrote something I (and others) thought was outrageous, but, even over time, it went un-rebutted substantively - even while being derided repeatedly just for being "from ALPHA".
I would imagine that any right-leaning person could write mirror image advice, using different outlets as examples.
The general technique works in a lot of contexts. For example, if you are signed up for and read your DFL State Rep's and State Senator's constituent newsletters (and you should be!), sign up for a few Republicans, too. (Surprisingly, no one on either side of the aisle cares if you are actually a constituent or not. For House members, signing up is easy, for Senate, less so, but do-able.) As a politics junkie, I am signed up for dozens, from both sides of the aisle. I don't read them all, every time, of course. Only Subject lines that grab me, and/or Legislators that I know write good ones. Many just copy-and-paste "boilerplate" from their party's Caucus staff. You don't want those - they're a waste of time. At the risk of angering many of my DFL friends, I can tell you that the GOP one that I think is the best of their lot is St. Rep. and current Gubernatorial candidate Kristin Robbins. Nothing in hers ever shows up in anyone else's, so I'm sure it's written by her or a member of her staff (as opposed to GOP Caucus staff), and she doesn't call DFLers names (many GOP'ers DO...) and she lays out her arguments for her positions very clearly. I don't worry (too much!) about her winning the GOP nomination for Governor because she is far too rational for the GOP caucus/convention/primary base...!
The point is that one has to get out of one's information bubble, and even then, one has to read critically, know the difference between an actual rebuttal and an ad-hominem attack, etc. So the answer to your question, Terry, is "no one place is good enough - not even Terry's "Better Minneapolis'!"
I actually found kstp to be the only regular news I find tolerable but I believe they lean left despite recently trying to be independent. I have been watching Almanac but it seems they are giving up on the idea of being unbiased. I occasionally watch fox family to see the other side, it's like watching news in a different country since it differs so much from all the others. Luckily I think I have a good head for finding the balance between. It would be nice to see more programs trying to be independent but I wonder if they ever really were. Perhaps if there was just less name calling.