Tom Humphrey is the man.

The Tennessean remains the newspaper of record for the State of Tennessee and they have a history, culture, and finesse for watching state government, utilizing those first amendment priviledges in the manner John Seigenthaler instilled in his Tennessean newsroom many years ago.

While the Tennessean has been battered along with Gannett in the economic downturn and online media revolution like any other newspaper or media property, the Tennessean has not lost sight of its role of monitoring state government, asking tough questions, ventilating conflicts of interest, and generally watching what is going on in the Haslam administration, it's not real hard to see if you know what your are doing and you are objective.

For decades, in my opinion, the Haslam family really only had to wrestle with the Knoxville media rags and training ground broadcast media and they were very successful putting a bad on their head or a sock in their mouth, but that culture won't work in Nashville and as they are learning, it won't work in Cleveland, won't work in New York and certainly not in Washington, D.C.

Governor Haslam is irked at the Tennessean more than he is irked at the state media outlets, but he needs to realize that the reporters in Nashville aren't going to fall for some chumpy line like the KNS does and certainly won't back off when the PR spin machine tells everybody to keep moving, nothing here to see, or that all is well. He's agitated that the reports in Nashville don't follow simple commands like the reporters in Knoxville do.

But good government is expected in Nashville, in part by the expectations and inquiries from the Tennessean. Good government is essentially an unknown in Knoxville and certainly in Knox County and you can look at the baffonnery and breathtaking incompetence of the Knoxville media and can easily see why.

It may be getting watered down by the editorial board here in Knoxville, but he seems to be better at the analysis in the blog than within any articles he has written over the last few years.

The Haslam methodology of dealing with the media in the Knoxville community won't work anywhere else and the sooner Jimmy "Candidly" Haslam figures that out the better off he and his company will be.

Nashville has 100 people with the same sized wallet as the Haslam family, Memphis has another 100 as well, the Tennessean has dealt with much tougher figures is government, politics, and business than the Haslam truck stop spin machine from Knoxville.