By Ellen Clegg
On a day when anti-Trump “No Kings” protests were scheduled across the country, shocking news out of Minnesota is dominating media coverage. The Democratic former speaker of the Minnesota House, Melissa Hortman, and her husband, Mark, were shot and killed early Saturday in their suburban Brooklyn Park home in what Gov. Tim Walz called a “politically motivated assassination.”
Another Democratic legislator, state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, were also shot multiple times in their home in nearby Champlin. Hoffman and his wife were critically injured, according to Walz, but are expected to survive. The gunman, identified by authorities as Vance Boelter, is still at large as of this writing.
CNN, as could be expected, was up early with vivid running coverage, complete with clips from Walz’s emotional press conference. “Our state lost a great leader,” he said, choking up, “and I lost the dearest of friends.” Minnesota State Police said the gunman impersonated a police officer. Thousands of Minnesotans are under a shelter-in-place order, Walz called for “No Kings” protests in the state to be canceled, although a source in Minneapolis reports that people are still turning out.
An all-hands national news story like this poses a core question for hyperlocal newsrooms, which typically launch with smaller staffs and a tightly focused mission of covering neighborhood people, politics and policies. For perspective, I called Emily Krumberger, a longtime nonprofit media creator in the Twin Cities who is now the vice president of programming for AMPERS, the Association of Minnesota Public and Educational Radio Stations. AMPERS, whose slogan is “Diverse Radio for Minnesota’s Communities,” is a network of 17 community radio stations “from border to border” and works to empower local storytellers and citizen journalists.
A Minnesota native, Krumberger recalled watching national media parachute in after George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis in 2020 and the subsequent violent demonstrations. “Some of the stories I witnessed then missed important nuance and context. That’s why it’s critical for local community outlets to continue to be supported,” she said. “There’s also an important long-term story that needs to be covered, that goes beyond the most sensational aspects and probes how this will impact policy and our sense of safety.”
Those essential questions about whether a communal sense of safety has been shredded will remain long after national journalists depart. Minnesota is far from a news desert; there are weeklies and small dailies covering its 87 counties. The Minnesota Star Tribune, a regional newspaper considered a national success story, is expanding into outlying small towns and rural areas — so the state’s local and hyperlocal newsrooms have an opportunity in the coming months to shed light on the aftermath of what appears to be a horrific incident of domestic terrorism.
On the state level, a number of regional and local news outlets are distinguishing themselves in terms of coverage. The Star Tribune, where new editor Kathleen Hennessey started her job May 12, demonstrated why size matters. The Strib’s first news of the shootings hit my in-box at 8:55 a.m. Eastern. Smart, timely coverage dominates the homepage, including a continually updated live feed, a sidebar on how to stay safe during lockdown, and reaction from President Trump and the FBI.
Although the Star Tribune recently offered targeted buyouts to senior employees, according to Madison McVan of the Minnesota Reformer, the 157-year-old for-profit newspaper still fields an admirably large newsroom with an estimated 220 journalists.
Hennessey told me in an email that much of the Strib’s coverage has been outside its paywall, including the scoop-driven live blog, the rapidly updated collection of all major developments and photos, as well as a selection of other stories related to public safety. Free coverage is also available on the websites of local television affiliates, including Fox 9, KARE11 (ABC), WCCO (CBS) and KSTP (ABC), as well as on Minnesota Public Radio.
The Reformer, a smaller digital newsroom that’s part of the nationwide States Newsroom network, focuses on the state legislature in St. Paul and offered political perspective from staff reporter Michelle Griffith. MinnPost and Sahan Journal, two digital outlets that we highlighted in our book, “What Works in Community News,” initially ran Associated Press stories and video, but MinnPost followed up with an in-depth piece on the country’s spiraling cycle of political violence by Ana Radelat, who has more than 20 years of experience covering politics in Washington, D.C.
Two hyperlocal weeklies that are part of the for-profit Adams Publishing Group, a chain of more than 125 newspapers owned by mini-mogul Mark Adams, produced original stories. The Osseo-Maple Grove Press and News published a piece by managing editor Alicia Miller, and reporter Jack Wiedner, a 2023 graduate of the University of Minnesota Duluth, has a piece for the Brooklyn Park Sun Post.
A year ago, the Star Tribune revamped its opinion pages to expand bylined commentaries by community members and cut down on the number of unsigned editorials. But some seasoned opinion columnists remain, including the doyenne of political writers, Lori Sturdevant. Sturdevant may weigh in on the murders in the future, of course, but in a column written on June 10, she gave a sense of Hortman’s stalwart leadership and willingness to cross party lines in the legislature during a critical vote on the state budget:
The fate of the state government in the biennium that’s due to start in July had come down to one big bone of partisan contention: Would MinnesotaCare still be available to all low-income Minnesota adults who care to (and can afford to) opt in, regardless of their immigration status? … In the equally split Minnesota House, only one [Democrat] — Speaker Emeritus Melissa Hortman — voted with Republicans to strip MinnesotaCare health insurance eligibility from undocumented immigrant adults.
In other words, Sturdevant writes, Hortman was a true leader, not of her faction or her party, “but of this state. They will surely pay a price with those who hate this deal. But for averting a shutdown, they also deserve respect — and thanks.”
