Comments (0) MNDOT has finally announced the design for the replacement bridge over the Mississippi in Hastings. It’s an arch-style bridge, repeating the past two river bridge designs.
The design cost came out about $100 MILLION lower than the MNDOT estimate. I suspect this is because the arch isn’t quite as huge as we might have expected. I think the proposed appearance looks fine.
OK, no, the Star Gazette newspaper is still there. At least, we’ve received recent issues. But the Star Gazette on-line version has gone through a misguided makeover. I remember being to reach articles just by clicking. It doesn’t work any more.
Clearly this is a recent change. The site has a FAQ section that shows just how much trouble customers are having. So it’s not just me.
There’s an article in Atlantic about the decline in the news industry and the rise of Google, news and all. The article, like most Big Media coverage of the topic, focus on the risk to Big Media news operations, like offices in Kabul or investigative pieces on government waste and coverups.
When I look at Google News, what I most often see are 1,200 copies of locally-published articles that are in fact Associated Press stories. These are classic “straight news” reports: announcements by officials describing crimes, legislation, accidents, celebrity activities, and so on. It is in fact rare for Google News, or any other news source, to produce the sort of in-depth reporting that might vie for a Pulitzer.
Yes, the traditional funding sources of such things are drying up. Yes, they play an essential role in self-government. But somehow we’ll find a way to pay for these things. Maybe Google will trip over a new business model as they blunder about, or maybe someone else will.
Things seem to be moving forward on much of the proposed Hastings river bridge. The pic below is an artist’s rendering of downtown near the replacement bridge. This shows the ‘arch’ alternative – they still haven’t decided if it will be an arch or ‘cable’ design.
Two additional riverfront projects emerged while planning this bridge: 1) moving the electrical substation that blights the riverfront landscape, and 2) building a pedestrian ‘spiral’ – homage to the long-gone Hastings Spiral Bridge – to connect downtown and the pedestrian walkway on the bridge deck.
Neither of these will be part of the bridge project.
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