Can a Newly Incarnated Star Tribune Thrive in Minnesota? There’s Hope

By: Christiana Sciaudone

The Minneapolis Star Tribune has gone state-wide, and is now known as the Minnesota Star Tribune. But will a rebranding and new strategy work to attract new subscribers while expanding the newsroom and maintaining profitability? 

To CEO and publisher Steve Grove, there’s no choice. 

“The main reason that it needs to work is that you’re not going to survive in this business if you’re just managing decline forever,” he said in an August 29 video interview. Newspapers have been trying to reinvent themselves for decades—take the Alabama Media Group, which operates AL.com, the incarnation of three local papers gone digital, and the parent company of The Advocate and The Times-Picayune, which is starting a new digital news outlet in the Shreveport-Bossier City metro area. 

But Minnesota has some characteristics that could assure its success. Minnesotans, considered to be among the best educated in the U.S., have a unique sense of identity and a high level of civic participation, Grove said. 

Rick Edmonds, a media business analyst for Poynter who grew up in Minnesota, agreed, noting that the area is a regional powerhouse and the economy is healthy. Statewide coverage also makes sense in a place like Minnesota, with its relatively aligned sense of identity versus, for example, Florida, where regions are very distinct, Edmonds said. And it helps to have a benevolent billionaire owner who is committed to journalism, in this case, Glen Taylor. 

Still, even Grove pointed out that no one has really won the local news game yet and Minnesotans may not actually want to pay for news. The state is also fairly well covered for news with a local NPR station, the Saint Paul Pioneer Press, and the free and non-profit Minnesota Reformer, among others. Then there’s the ever-present fear of publishers of all kinds that a new form of information delivery will render current technologies obsolete and become the newest barrier to monetization.

Still, there’s hope. 

The print edition remains profitable, which, along with a cash infusion from Taylor, is helping pay for new hires and digital expansion. The Star Tribune’s digital subscriptions have plateaued in recent years at around 113,000, and the revamp of the online experience has been a focus for Grove. In print, the Sunday circulation is 142,000 and weekday circulation is 81,000. 

“There’s a pretty big delta between where we’ve been strategically and digitally and where we need to be to be successful, and part of that is just a better product, which we’ve just launched, new apps and a better platform,” Grove said. 

It’s also going to require rethinking how to be journalists. 

“We are moving away from being a paper of record to being a paper of relevance,” Grove said. ”We have to write the stories that are relevant to people’s lives, and not feel like we have to attend every event.” 

That means not hitting up every press conference held by the governor – even if he is the Democratic vice presidential candidate. There has to be a solid reason for coverage. It also means pulling back from national news and beats like personal finance, generic topics that are abundantly covered across other media. 

“You have to be different. And so how are we different? Well, we’re from Minnesota. Every story has to have that lens of Minnesota with it, and otherwise you can get the other stuff elsewhere,” Grove said. “It has to be this premium product. That’s about the place we live, and that’s how we differentiate.”

J. Patrick Coolican, who previously worked at the Star Tribune and is now editor-in-chief at the policy-focused Minnesota Reformer, agreed that there are ample opportunities to produce journalism in the state because of the level of civic engagement and interest in natural resources, pro sports, higher education, the Mayo Clinic, and companies ranging from United Healthcare to Cargill. 

As such, the Tribune newsroom has been reorganized around five areas specifically designed with the population’s interests in mind: news and politics, business, sports, food and culture and the outdoors.  

“They chose wisely,” Coolican said. “You have people who are really, really into these things, and so they have an opportunity there.”

While his own non-profit publication is free—and has seen a marked increase in readership—Coolican thinks people are far more willing to pay for news today, if it’s found to be valuable and unique.  

And it’s those subscriber dollars that will count the most for the Tribune, Grove said, though advertising will continue to be critical. 

“Our dollars are not coming in through just running ads on our own properties, but actually using our expertise in media to run media strategies for advertisers,” Grove said. “We have the whole agency side of our business where we’re acting really as an agency on the digital side for local businesses.” 

The news outlet is also looking at affiliate marketing, events, sponsored content, philanthropy, and bundled subscriptions as additional sources of revenue. The bottom line is that all of these changes have to result in profitability. 

“It comes down to the revenue, like, can we pay for the journalism? So if we’re not bringing a profit, then we’re not successful,” Grove said. “We’ll know we’re successful when we have a digital subscription base that’s at least twice what we have today, and that we have some other really meaningful new sources of revenue that comprise a pretty significant portion of our PNL… I don’t think the digital subscriptions alone are going to do it, because we’re just coming from a lot of where print was such a piggy bank, and that model doesn’t exist or isn’t existing anymore.” 

Edmonds from Poynter has written frequently about the Star Tribune as a success story. The paper hasn’t made any recent major layoffs—it has about 225 journalists—and has been committed to solid journalism while others have turned to wire services to fill pages. Both he and Coolican said that if any newspaper can succeed, it will be the Star Tribune.

“We’re bullish because of some basic core fundamentals,” Grove said. “The Minnesota component is a piece of it. The other is that we don’t think people have somehow stopped wanting to know the truth or wanting to understand what’s happening in their communities. We think that there’s a certain kind of pride that people can associate with their local news organizations that is different from, say, the national media, which is more polarized.”