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Minnesota Monthly /  August 2007 /  The Power — and — piousness — and — frustration — and — sorrow of One

The Power — and — piousness — and — frustration — and — sorrow of One

How Cheryl Johnson became C.J., the most infamous Journalist in Minnesota

(page 1 of 4)

When you're the only gossip columnist in town, even in a town without much gossip, there isn’t a lot of down time. So on this Saturday night in late April, Cheryl Johnson—better known as C.J. to Star Tribune readers, FOX-9 viewers, and FM-107 listeners—is working. She’s at Trocaderos Nightclub & Restaurant in the Minneapolis Warehouse District to attend a concert by Bobby Brown. The singer, recently divorced from pop star Whitney Houston, is in the Twin Cities trying to revive his career after years of little work and a lot of bad publicity. C.J. is here because she needs material for her next column.

Upon arriving, the 53-year-old writer is whisked into a roped-off VIP section to wait for the show. There she encounters a strange mix of Twin Cities high rollers: a self-styled “celebrity dentist,” a member of the Minnesota Timberwolves, and a host of scantily clad young women. She chats with Trocaderos’s CEO, Shane Segal, who offers her a drink, which she refuses. Eventually, when the show is delayed, Segal takes her backstage so she can interview Brown. As soon as she begins asking the singer questions, however, members of Brown’s ridiculously large security detail start yelling, “No interviews before the show!” When Brown steps outside to smoke, C.J. tries to follow, but a diminutive woman blocks the door.

“Are you his girlfriend?” C.J. asks.

“No, his personal manager,” the woman replies.

C.J. lets out a chortle.

In her column, C.J. tends to cast herself as an outsider, an impolitic truth-teller in a land of superficial civility, and tonight, as usual, she makes little attempt to fit in among the trendy crowd. She’s wearing black jeans, a purple shirt, and sunglasses. As she walks back through the club’s main floor, murmurs of “That’s C.J.” follow in her wake. Many seem to consider a C.J. sighting as proof that they’re at the hottest event in town, though as many people run from her as approach. When a man calls out, “Hey C.J., you know me!” she replies, “Unnnnn-FOR-tun-ate-lyyyyyy.” Then she asks whether the woman he’s with is his wife.

When her column about the concert appears two days later, C.J. will write that the show had the feel of a “rather nasty state fair,” and compares Brown to a dog, albeit a famous one (Lassie). She will also note that Brown’s skinny “manager” looks a lot like the woman some celebrity magazines have pegged as his new love, an ex-friend of his ex-wife.

But now, as the concert finally begins, C.J. stands off to the side, water bottle in hand, arms crossed. “I say Bobby, you say Brown,” chants the singer. “Bobby..., Bobby...” C.J. does not chant, but when Brown pulls a woman he charmingly describes as a “fat girl” from the audience and encourages her to undress him, she does note, “I’ve never been to a live sex show before.”


THIS SPRING, WHEN the Star Tribune announced another round of staff reductions, each of the paper’s four metro columnists—Nick Coleman, Katherine Kersten, Doug Grow, and C.J.—were summoned to meet with editor Nancy Barnes. At the time, it was widely speculated that one of the four would be asked to give up their slot. It didn’t come to that, however; Grow decided to leave the paper, a departure that was nearly overshadowed by the dramatic reshuffling of personnel in other parts of the newsroom. Beats covering the outdoors, architecture, classical music, and even television were deemed expendable.

The paper’s gossip column was not. “Every paper has to make a lot of choices these days,” says Anders Gyllenhaal, who served as the Star Tribune’s editor from 2002 until February of this year.  “C.J. brings a slice of life that has a lot of news in it and a sense of place. People love to read what she writes.”

Indeed, few doubt that her column is among the Star Tribune’s most avidly read features both in print and online. (It regularly makes the online version’s list of “most read” and “most e-mailed” stories.) “Unlike other columnists, she crosses all demographics and is read by everyone,” says Katherine Roepke of Roepke Public Relations. With that reach also comes power. Says Roepke: “If she writes about a restaurant, there’s a great impact.” Trocaderos’s Segal considers a mention the ultimate PR coup.  “It’s better than any ad you can buy,” he says. “People say they don’t read her column, but when I’m in it everyone mentions it. They love it but don’t want to admit it.”

Of course, being widely read is not the same as being liked, and there is a long list of prominent people—from pop stars to politicians—who consider C.J. the enemy. “Those who are in the column are often unhappy about it,” says Gyllenhaal, now executive editor of the Miami Herald. “That’s the nature of the work.”

It may be the nature of the work, but C.J. is also unique among her colleagues. Other big-city gossip columnists may be tolerated, mocked, or feared, but they seldom attract the level of loathing and fascination that C.J. invites. She may, in fact, be the most notorious journalist in Minnesota today, a position she has achieved by being tenacious, invasive, acerbic, and self-righteous—the antithesis of everything that’s supposedly Minnesotan. And today, after almost two decades in the public eye, she finds herself living a singularly strange existence: She’s a gossip columnist who’s more famous than almost everyone she writes about.

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