Minnesota media’s moment

If ever a city needed a robust local press corps, it is Minneapolis right now. Fortunately, its media market “remains strong,” The Guardian’s Jeremy Barr writes, ensuring thorough coverage of the ICE crackdown in the city.

“I think we have the strongest media ecosystem of any city that’s parallel to our city,” Matt Carlson, a Minneapolis-based professor of journalism for the University of Minnesota, told Barr. Minnesota Public Radio deputy managing producer Megan Burks told him the network is “back to trying to figure out what is our new normal, what is our new rhythm.”

The coverage has not come without its challenges. “Reporters are volunteering to work extra shifts, weekend hours, and are spending time getting the story right,” Star Tribune publisher Steve Grove wrote in a recent newsletter on Substack entitled “Minnesota’s crisis is America’s crisis.”

When a local story is also a national one, local reporters often have the advantage of knowing the people, geography and institutions. As Andy Meek writes for Forbes, local coverage of the fatal shooting of Renee Good shows that “proximity still matters,” though national journalists, he writes, can add “scale and context.”

What really matters, writes Damon Kiesow, the Knight Chair in Journalism Innovation at the Missouri School of Journalism, in a thread on Bluesky, is local, as opposed to corporate, control. He cites a Star Tribune editorial condemning what it says is now an ICE “occupation.” Writes Kiesow: “If this paper were controlled by an out-of-state corp specifically unconcerned with local good, would this editorial be written?”

  • Related: Police, Protesters, and the Press (RCFP) 

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press has updated its guide on journalists’ rights while covering protests.  

News In Focus
Headlines, resources and events aligned with API’s four areas of focus.

Civic Discourse & Democracy

>> The crisis year for journalism is here (The New Republic)

The new CBS approach to news is an “explicit embrace of the so-called ‘view from nowhere’ journalism,” writes Felipe De La Hoz, saying it is now clear that such  an approach “primarily serves powerful interests.” 

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Culture & Inclusion

>> Not invisible: How Enlace Latino NC tells the stories others miss (Reynolds Journalism Institute) 

RJI fellow Claudia Yaujar-Amaro spoke with Enlace Latino NC’s Paola Jaramillo about how her publication focuses on issues that matter most to immigrant communities in North Carolina. “The fact that we are part of the same community we cover already gives us prior experience in our DNA, allowing us to provide more sensitive, careful coverage,” she said.

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Community Engagement & Trust

>> How student newsrooms are filling America’s local news gaps (Editor & Publisher)

Student media is “really having a moment,” said Barbara “Bob” Allen, who has built a map of student media organizations across the country in collaboration with the University of Vermont’s Center for Community News. She told Tandy Lau that she felt it was important to build the database as “a slice of history” to show the extent of college journalism today.

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Revenue & Resilience

>> Local newspapers are closing. Local news is surviving (The New York Times) 

The impending closure of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is disheartening but does not mean the end of local journalism in that city, writes Sarabeth Berman, the chief executive of the American Journalism Project. She makes the case for nonprofit newsrooms sustained by philanthropic institutions, businesses, individual donors and readers. “Under this model, local journalism is treated as a public good, essential to civic life, akin to a museum or a food bank,” she writes.

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What else you need to know

⚖️ Search of reporter’s home tests law with roots in a campus paper’s suit (The New York Times)

🤖 This AI startup just landed a deal that could transform newsrooms (Inc.)

🎸Pitchfork allows comments with new $5 subscription (Axios)

📉 Craig Newmark explains why he’s pulling back on funding journalism (Nieman Lab)