Over the weekend we noted how the Minneapolis paper seems to have its thumb on the scale while covering the very close U.S. Senate race between Al Franken and Norm Coleman.

We noted the oddity of Strib editor Nancy Barnes announcing, via memo, that the newspaper columnists who appear in the news pages would no longer be allowed to weigh in on the campaign, and making that announcement one day after a Strib columnist labeled Franken a slanderer of Christianity.

Another Barnes memo, this one from September, also raised eyebrows because the editor so clearly aped right-wing talking points about the media, and practically accused her own staff of a built-in bias.

She wrote:

It is more important than ever that we be vigilant about stripping any bias from our reporting and/or editing...We are all human, and some among our staff may privately be pulling for one candidate or another. But let's take extra care to make sure personal opinion doesn't show up in the news pages.