Last week, a fellow Minneapolis reporter shared a private email sent to her from WCCO 830 afternoon host Jason DeRusha, which put him in the spotlight. He argued that’s a place no one wants to be.
Liz Collin of Alpha News, a right-wing media outlet in the Twin Cities, shared an email DeRusha sent to her, in which he shared his displeasure for the style of reporting his former co-worker now dabbles in.
“I’m sad this is what and who you’ve become,” DeRusha wrote, who argued he had been nothing but civil and had defended his former colleague.
Collin, who received the email on Saturday, February 17th, didn’t post it until Friday, March 1st. In her post to X, she claimed DeRusha “continues to push lies” about law enforcement officials in the city, namely regarding the murder of George Floyd, and said she “will never spend a second on the George Soros station.”
The tweet from Collin received 435,000 views on X, with DeRusha’s response garnering an additional 235,000 views.
To begin his show on Friday, the Twin Cities host noted he doesn’t blame people for reacting to the interaction, but argued it was a position no one wants to be in.
“Part of having an outsized personality and outsized approach on social media is that you do attract response,” Jason DeRusha said. “I never blame anyone for responding to whatever sliver of social media that the algorithm serves up. It’s not your responsibility as a Twitter user, or Facebook or Instagram or whatever to be like, ‘Oh, well, I better go listen to Jason’s show to know what he really thinks or what he really talks about.’
“But what you don’t want is to become the main character. No one wants to be the main character on social media. And I think a lot of you know what the main character is. It’s the person that becomes sort of the punching bag, if you will. And today, a former colleague of mine put up the bat signal to her followers to come let me have it.”
He continued by sharing his reasoning for discussing the topic, adding that there’s a falsehood peddled by many in the media today about being a victim.
“My email was in response to a back-and-forth on Twitter…I sort of debated about this today. Do I really want to talk about this? Because social media is like its own little universe. For those of you who aren’t engaging in it, it’s like ‘Well, why did why talk about something so small, and petty?’
“But the reason I decided to talk about it is because there is a form of media that trades on rage and trades on playing the role of the victim. And I want to talk about it so you can analyze it as such. I would encourage you to reject it. If you are a Fox News host or an Alpha News reporter, and you have 30,000 followers on X, it’s a load of crap when you act like ‘Man, no one will ever listen to me. Why does the mainstream media ignore me?'”
