A Story About Theodore Wirth and Squirrel Supremacy?

Did a famed parks leader import gray squirrels to Minneapolis — and have the red ones killed? January 20, 2023 Star Trib

Gray squirrels were once a rare breed mostly found in forests. Now they are abundant in the city's parks.

 

 

Minneapolis parks are swarming with gray squirrels — those fat-cheeked, bushy-tailed tree rats that stalk picnics and snatch Doritos out of people's hands.
They're smart. They're audacious. And they might be overpopulated.
Reader Dennis Becker wanted to know if it was true that one of the founders of the Minneapolis park system, longtime superintendent Theodore Wirth, had imported gray squirrels to Minneapolis from afar. He sought answers from Curious Minnesota, the Star Tribune's reporting project fueled by reader questions.

"I heard they went around shooting all the red squirrels so they could have the gray squirrels," said Becker, who suggested it might be time to shoot the grays now. "They're such a nuisance, you know. They chew on everything and there's so many of them."
The answer is, amazingly, yes. Wirth did go out of his way to supplant one squirrel with another. 

That's according to old newspaper articles, Minneapolis Park Board records and local park historian David C. Smith. Wirth, who did many heavy-handed things to reshape nature in pursuit of the perfect park, was actually quite proud of himself for the accomplishment.
It's hard to imagine parks today without the common gray squirrel — though it is not clear how much of the Twin Cities' urban squirrel population can be attributed to Wirth's effort. They were once a rare breed mostly found in forests, a sought-after lawn ornament for budding urban parks around the country......

 

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Known Squirrel Supremacist Theodore Wirth

 

 

 

Black News Channel Goes Dark

 Black News Channel Shuts Down Two Years After Debut

The network, which had high-profile commentators like Charles Blow and Marc Lamont Hill, was unable to pay its employees this week

Identity politics is normally a lucrative racket. From Jesse Jackson Jr. to Al Sharpton  to BNC's marquee "talent". The Democrat's divisive politics is a BIG TENT for race hustlers of many stripes.  Tribalism is a mainstay of the modern left. 

Video from 11Alive

 

 From the Wall Street Journal

Black News Channel, a cable news network that went on the air two years ago to provide an alternative look at news from Black Americans’ perspective, is shutting down, the outlet’s chief executive told employees on Friday. 

“Due to challenging market conditions and global financial pressures, we have been unable to meet our financial goals, and the timeline afforded to us has run out,” Princell Hair, who has been chief executive since July 2020, wrote in a memo to staff. “Effective immediately, BNC will cease live production and file for bankruptcy.”


Black News Channel’s abrupt closure comes just a year after the network revamped its lineup with high-profile commentators like Charles Blow and Marc Lamont Hill, and added a new morning show. It also shows the difficulties traditional cable-TV channels face as cord-cutting continues and consumers turn away from the channel dial. 

The network, which was co-founded by former Oklahoma congressman J.C. Watts, is largely backed by automotive-parts billionaire and Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shad Khan. Mr. Khan had explored a sale of some or all of the network in recent months, people familiar with the matter said. Mr. Khan, who has invested roughly $50 million in BNC, won’t invest any further, according to some of the people. A spokesman for Mr. Khan had no comment.

By 5 p.m. ET on Friday, the network will start running old programming, which will last through the rest of this month, according to one of the people familiar with the matter.

BNC’s more than 200 employees didn’t receive their paychecks this week, the people said. They won’t receive severance pay or benefits beyond the end of the month, the people said.
“Arrangements have been made for the company to pay all earned but unpaid wages to laid-off employees,” the board of BNC said in a statement Friday evening. 

Under Mr. Hair’s leadership, BNC landed distribution deals with most pay-TV providers, including Comcast Corp.’s Xfinity, Dish Network Corp. and DirecTV. The network said it reached roughly 50 million households. 

BNC didn’t receive fees from distributors for carrying its channel, according to one of the people familiar with the matter. Instead, the network relied on advertising revenue and funding from its backer—a practice that is commonplace for most upstart cable channels. 

The network’s viewership hit a peak of 80,000 this week, according to Nielsen data, as it aired wall-to-wall coverage of confirmation hearings for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman nominated to the Supreme Court. 

Mr. Hair, a TV veteran whose resume includes CBS, CNN, Turner Broadcasting and NBC Sports, had looked to shake up the cable-TV news landscape, which has seen audiences divided among major networks like CNN, Fox News and MSNBC. Fox News parent Fox Corp. and Wall Street Journal parent News Corp share common ownership.