The Daily Mole, beta

If the Daily Planet is a fabulous aggregator of local new publications (neighborhood, ethnic group, labor, women, all the folks whose interests are not taken seriously by the mainstream media in this town, which is to say most of us), another new Twin Cities media venture is The Daily Mole, put on/out by Steve Perry (former editor of City Pages), Cecily Marcus, and Co. It's a very fancy Wordpress site, with a home page that bills itself as "Twin Cities", and four other categories on separate pages: pop media, talk, multimedia lounge, and listings. I've already posted some comments there as I get a feel for the content. The site is still in beta, and their really interested in responding to their readers' input.

We'll see how it shapes up as a site that can do a lot of what City Pages and VitaMN do on their sites, but better. Their banner says, "A thinky/talky approach to the news!" and "your new virtual watercooler." What I'm not sure of yet is if they will have the kind of in-depth articles that Perry used to write/edit for City Pages, that went into more of the background of local or national/international stories than the Strib did. I think that is the territory that the new MinnPost, scheduled to rollo out on Nov. 8, is staking out with its long list of eminent journalist collaborators. Since this is a daily, it may not be geared to the long read the way a weekly is, but it will bring us multiple feeds that link politics and the arts better than MNSpeak is doing currently. I'm afraid my experience of MNSpeak is of that it has devolved into a bully pulpit for a small, vocal and obnoxious set of commenters who scream at each other and insult folks who aren't members of their club. Attempts to engage their grew tiresome quickly. Maybe the Daily Mole will create a space for smarter conversations. We'll see how they handle the inevitable moment when they have to moderate comments or intervene in flame wars.