Recommended reading: Sid Hartman in Minnesota Monthly

I gravitated to this profile of Hartman--a legendary sports columnist with the Minneapolis Star-Tribune--because I grew up reading his stuff, sometimes with ironic detachment (Hartman abases/exalts himself with shameless references to "close personal friends" like Bobby Knight, and dismisses people he disagrees with as "so-called geniuses") and sometimes because I craved the insider dirt that Hartman masterfully digs up.

But non-Minnesotans should really take a look, too. Writer Jeff Severns Gunzel does a great job of evoking a romantic, bygone era in the newspaper business, while simultaneously making it clear that--for some journalistic heavyweights who came of age in that era--basic rules of journalism ethics simply didn't apply.

[Via Romenesko.]