Nick Coleman (columnist)
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Disambiguation: see also Nick Coleman the Minnesota politician and this Nick Coleman's father
Nicholas Joseph Coleman (born June 26, 1950 in Ramsey, Minnesota) is a long time Minnesota journalist. He currently writes as a metro columnist for the Star Tribune, the large circulation daily newspaper published in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Coleman is on his second stint at the Star Tribune, having begun his career there in the 1970’s.
By happenstance, Coleman was in attendance when Minnesota Twins owner Calvin Griffith made his infamous Waseca Lions Club speech in 1978. Griffith’s racial remarks were reported by Coleman in the Star, and ignited a local controversy. The Star’s editorial page called on Griffith to sell the team. The Twins’ best player, Rod Carew - a black Panamanian by birth - demanded to be traded immediately, saying he would no longer work on Griffith’s plantation. In the weeks following Carew was traded to the California Angels for four players.
Coleman worked 17 years at a rival crosstown daily, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, before returning to the Star Tribune in 2004 as a metro columnist.
In print, Coleman’s persona is somewhat a poor caricature of the gruff, big city metro columnist as made famous by Mike Royko, Jimmy Breslin, and others. Coleman as columnist is a reporter about town, writing about events and people from a knee jerk populist, extremely liberal, viewpoint. This point of view is safe and non provacative in Minneapolis. Coleman’s common themes include the perceived if not actual defunding of public education, corporate welfare and subsidies, and crime. As Minneapolis experiences a disturbing crime wave in 2006, Coleman has burnished his liberal bona fides and maintained law and order populist credentials by simultaneously calling for increased early child hood education and more cops on the street.
Coleman has engaged in rhetorical feuds with local Twin Cities bloggers. In 2004, Coleman criticized the role of local bloggers in the Dan Rather / Killian documents controversy, and a back and forth exchange ensued for some weeks in local print and on the internet.
Coleman has done some talk radio work in the Twin Cities. He was briefly a morning host at Air America’s affiliate in the Twin Cities, until a feud with management over editorial content and salary prompted his departure.
Coleman is the eldest son of the late Nicholas David Coleman, Sr., a prominent Minnesota Democrat who died in 1981, and Rose Mari Finnegan. He is also the older brother of Chris Coleman, current mayor of St. Paul, Minnesota, and a stepson of Deborah Howell Coleman, ombudsman for the Washington Post.
Coleman also is the husband of St. Paul Pioneer Press columnist, Laura Billings.
