London School of Economics steals Pioneer Press reporter

My sources at the PiPress have forwarded me a goodbye speech for a good guy and one heck of a good reporter. It's worth reading.

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Union organizer and reporter par excellence, Alex Friedrich, is leaving the Pioneer Press today (Friday) to pursue a master's degree in European History at the London School of Economics.

Friedrich was a unit chair with the Minnesota Newspaper Guild, of the Communications Workers of America Local 37002.

More on him here:
http://www.shoptalknet.org/index.php?get=Alex+Friedrich

His co-worker, Fred Melo, sent this email around to everyone in the newsroom, after the 4 p.m. goodbye speeches and cake.

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Here's the goodbye-to-Alex speech I would have given 20 minutes ago, had that Q@#$%$^ not cut me off in traffic and had the police chief spoken a little bit faster. Not my fault, I double-pinky swear. (Well....):


Alex was my first male friend at the Pioneer Press and... (Hmmm... Let me try that again with another lede here... )

Alex's reporting life has taken him from Germany and Prague to the rain-soaked streets of a post-Hurricane Katrina Mississippi, not to forget the hazardous byways of Internet blogging (without pooping. If you don't know what I'm taking about, do a search for Friedrich and State Fair).

But this was not my primary way of knowing Alex or accessing the open library inside his head. Truth be told, I rarely read his beat stuff. Washington County? Might as well be Guam to me.

Few people realize how hard Alex worked for all of us -- as a newsroom, as a paper, and as a brave but embattled industry -- once his computer shut off and he "went home" for the day.

On a near-nightly basis, his was the face and voice of reporters, editors and photographers, writing and researching and organizing the stuff that most of us don't have the stomach for. Mondays at noon, week in and week out, he was there come heck or come highwater, meeting with co-workers across departments, planner in hand.

Whatever our remaining challenges as a paper and as an industry, the short-term results have been better than many expected. I truly believe Alex Friedrich and the loyalty he inspired is a signifcant reason why the Pioneer Press is growing circulation, while the competition isn't.

His was leadership with a smile, and he always maintained a forward-thinking, solution-oriented way of figuring how to improve life here for all of us, and not just for a particular segment of the newsroom.

Leave it to a beautiful woman to steal his heart and kidnap him off to the London School of Economics. Not too shabby, young man. Sounds like a permanent contract to me.

Now go forth and multiply....



Frederick Melo

Reporter, St. Paul Pioneer Press

345 Cedar St., St. Paul, MN 55101

Office: 651.228.2172 | Mobile: 651.398.5534

Fax: 651.228.5500

fmelo@pioneerpress.com | www.twincities.com