I thought it was pretty stupid of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune to move humorist James Lileks from column work to beat reporting, but Mike Malone captures the real problem:

One of the reasons for this intense reaction is that for most of us in the rest of the world, the only thing we know about Minneapolis these days, and certainly about the Star-Tribune, is what we read in Lileks.com. In other words, James Lileks is far bigger than the newspaper that employs him, is its single most effective bastion against falling subscription revenues, and is its most powerful marketing and promotion tool.

That's the reality, and I have to wonder if the owners of the paper get that: their brand is now less valuable than the Lileks brand. They could have worked with him; my guess is that they'll be working without him soon. Like buggy whip peddlers in 1925, they don't seem to have any idea what that noise in the distance means...

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