When asked to describe Lisa Clausen, her friends and colleagues keep using one word: integrity.
Clausen, the features design director at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, died Tuesday after battling a rare form of abdominal cancer. She was 51.
Cory Powell, the Strib’s managing editor for presentation, said that her designers had been hit hard “because she inspired such amazing loyalty. She was an enormous advocate for people and her staff.” Her illness had kept her out of the newsroom for the better part of the last year.
Monica Moses, who brought Clausen to the Strib from the Los Angeles Times in 2004, echoed those sentiments.
“She had so much integrity. In any organization, there’s a lot of game playing. People aren’t necessarily very good to each other. They don’t follow through on promises. Lisa was mystified by that because that is not the way she would operate. She was just a very genuine person. There was no facade,” she said.
“She was Lisa no matter her audience. She absolutely lived her principles. She and I used to laugh (and cry) about our shared idealism — how much it set us up for disappointment in newsrooms, but how impossible it seemed to overcome.”
Clausen was a University of Missouri alum, earning both undergraduate (1979) and graduate (1983) degrees in journalism. Her career took her to design and management jobs around the country: Kansas City Star, Kansas City Times, The Gazette in Colorado Springs, the San Diego Union-Tribune and finally to the LAT and Strib.
Former SND President Bill Gaspard worked frequently with Clausen (in Kansas City, San Diego and L.A.).
“She was absolutely what she seemed. She didn’t act one way to one person another way to someone else. She was always the kind of person I aspire to be. She was the most genuine and decent person I ever met,” Gaspard said.
“Her earnestness was something we would joke about … like I was Nietzsche and she was Air Supply. I always tried to help ease that inevitable disappointment when people didn’t do what they said they were going to. She was always looking for newspaper nirvana. Maybe now she’s found it somewhere.”
Gaspard had a chance to visit Clausen after she became sick.
“She was always trying to make the best of it. She was always trying to fight it. She was not complaining. She wanted to talk about the jobs and the kids and the dogs. She was somebody who just loved to go home at night and have people over and play with their dogs and drink beer and talk all night.”
“Those are the things that mattered to her: people, pets and nature. She was passionate about the work, but she didn’t exclude the balance that most of us regret we can’t achieve.”
She is survived by her husband, Bill Bergsten, and 3 Labrador retrievers, Steve, Katy and Ella.
A memorial ceremony is still being planned. According to her good friend Laurie Harker, Lisa was to be cremated and her ashes will be scattered over a river in her beloved Colorado.
Lisa Clausen (right) with Kelli Sullivan. Photo courtesy Bill Gaspard.
I regret that I never worked with Lisa and didn’t know her better, but am grateful that I did have chances to meet up with her over the years, raise a glass and share a tale. She was one of the good guys and will be missed. My thoughts are with her colleagues, friends and family.
(Thanks to Mr. Cavendish for such a timely and thoughtful post).
The first time I met Lisa said everything about the way newspapers too often work — and everything about her character.
She’s the most “true” person I know.
We met in a conference room, on one of her first days here at the Star Tribune.
As I recounted my failed efforts to join the features design desk (from a “layout editor” job in which i filled in on covers), we talked about my pages, mizzou, our approaches to design and journalism.
I must have done something right because I distinctly remember her kind of sitting back in her seat and giving an appraising look that — to me — said: “Hmm. Well, we’ll just see about that.”
Problem solved. Within months, I was on the features design desk.
She coached me to my first (and more) SND awards. But more than that, she was a mentor and a friend who built a safe, creative space for design in this newsroom.
She will be sorely missed.
Although Lisa was a colleague here at the Strib, she was more of a friend—we never worked together here, even though I was a part-time layout editor.
We knew each other through mutual friends, and the first time we met, it was like, “Hey! There you are!” We clicked right away.
I wish we had made more efforts to continue that clicking. We let our schedules get in the way of becoming closer. (She worked week days, I worked nights and weekends.) But on the Saturday mornings that Lisa, Bill, my significant other and I got together for greasy-spooon breakfasts, there was a lot of laughter along with jokes about bad coffee and crispy hashbrowns.
I wish we had hung out more. I always thought, “When spring comes ... when summer is here ... when she’s back from Missouri ... when she’s back at work ...”
Of course I knew of Lisa’s immense talent as a designer, but mostly I knew her as one heckuva a fine woman and potential great friend. How very much I already regret not having made more of an effort.
To Bill and the dogs, and to Barb and Martha, who were longtime friends; and to Laurie, who I know was a very dear friend, my thoughts are with you.
I just received the news that Lisa had passed. I’m still reeling. Lisa as Bill G. said, was the most genuine person
in the world. What you saw, was what you got. No pretention what so ever. She was and always will be one
of my best and dearest friends. I will miss her immeasurably. There will never be anyone as beautiful as she was. She was a dear, dear person. Her kindest radiated from her like a super nova. She was a gentle,
loving, caring compassionate soul. I loved her deeply.
May I take some of what she taught me, and share it
with all I meet. I will miss her forever. -Kerry Meyer
It is so wonderful to read the love in what has been written here. Please continue to share your stories and sentiments in the guestbook set up linked to Lisa’s obit in the Star Tribune of Sunday, July 20th. There are no words to describe the loving light that Lisa shared with all she touched. An angel walked amongst us and we are forever blessed. Kerry, she told me reams about you (even gave me one a couple of your pieces which I cherish) She loved you dearly....
“Praise the Baby Fifa”
Yesterday we held a group farewell for designers leaving or have left the ill-fated LA Times features design desks and I wore my Lisa Clausen T-shirt which Bill Gaspard had made up when Lisa left us. Her smiling face has rays around it, not unlike an angel. Condolences to her family, friends and colleagues. She’ll be missed.
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A straight shooter indeed. She was always there when you needed her. Even when our law firm of injury lawyers were in need of some food at an outing, she brought us some food. What an amazing women. I know many will remember her as a women of integrity.