End of an Era

James Lileks' last column in the Minneapolis paper went up last Friday. In some sense, I'm glad; the column was a tiny little thing that I didn't like and consequently didn't read very often. And presumably his column had gone down in readership (if it was the most visited item on the Star-Tribune site, they wouldn't have cancelled it), so he's got the freedom to find a more congenial format. [And on a related note: I don't have the numbers, but I imagine that his column took a hit upon the transformation from the Backfence to the Quirk. There are two possible interpretations: the problem is because of the new format imposed by an idiotic editor, or the problem is because Lileks can't write anymore. They appear to have gone for option #2.]

And in the short term, the news pages will get a lot more hits, since I doubt I'll be the only one over the next week poring through the articles to see which ones he wrote, and to see if he's any good at reportage. (He says no, but he'd say that anyway.)