I joined the James Lileks/Minneapolis Star-Tribune blogswarm a couple of days ago. If you remotely care about the topic, this lengthy and thoughtful essay from ABCNews.com’s Michael Malone is must reading.  Here’s a tasty nugget:

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.

To rip that platform out from underneath its single most important asset now makes the “Strib” the poster child for the astonishingly stupid and suicidal decisions made by newspapers in the 21st century.

Do read the whole thing.