Meet Your Newest Target Team Member

As part of its settlement of a class-action lawsuit for fraud, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune has cancelled James Lileks' "humor" column, effective a week from Friday. The paper graciously agreed to keep Lileks on as a reporter. Lileks, however, is ungrateful and urges his fans to rise up as one on his behalf:

Would it matter if you contacted the paper? It very well might. Here's the reader's rep's page.

If I can get my column back and / or a nice big Online gig, that would be a satisfactory conclusion. Reporting on internet start-ups as opposed to joining an internet start-up – eh, not so much.

Lileks also admits he's unqualified for his future job ("writing straight news - clearly, simply, briskly - is a skill I lack").

The man is a shrewd negotiator. Not since Saddam Hussein have I seen such mad negotiating skillz.

I imagine that the volume of complaintswill dwarf that received when the Star-Tribune moved Mutts to the classified section and replaced the Cryptoquote with Sudoko. None of them will come from readers of the newspaper, or of the English language.

Hugh "Jass" Hewitt imagines that Mr. Lileks will receive tens of job offers from savvy media enterprises that apparently felt ethically constrained from making competing offers while Lileks was working as a columnist, but feel no similar compunction now that he's assigned to reporting duties. None of those job offers will come from Hugh himself, or his employers, townhall.com and the Salem Radio Network, naturally. Hugh also provides the paper's phone number for those wishing to cancel their subscription based on the stunning decline in reportorial standards beginning in about 10 days.