I hope the waning days of summer are treating you well. It’s been anything but a slow season in Minnesota, where 2026 has already been a year that will shape our state’s identity for years to come.

We’re looking forward to digging into all that’s happening at our second-annual ideas festival on September 22, the North Star Summit.

The North Star Summit, year 2

We tried something new last year at the Strib - launching an ideas festival that brings leaders to Minnesota to discuss the future of our country, through a Midwestern lens. The sold-out event exceeded our expectations, so we’re doing it again - with an expanded program and bigger venue.

It’s a great excuse to come to Minnesota, and I’d love for you to join us! Use code SUMMITINSIDER for $50 off general admission tickets.

We just announced the program this week, and here’s what’s new:

• An expanded line-up, including presidential hopefuls, major national CEOs, top technology leaders, innovative start-up founders, and more

• An extra half-day of programming, focused on innovation

• A host of new sponsors: Google, The New York Times, Target, Fairview, HealthPartners, Thrivent, & more

• A new location - the Guthrie Theatre, a world-class stage

We’re doing this because we’ve found that convening people is a big value we can bring to our community. And doing journalism live holds a lot of appeal to our audience - it reminds them we’re here, and accelerates conversations. It’s also a chance to diversify our business model and create new partnerships.

The Great Minnesota Get-together

The second reason to come on by is the State Fair, which just kicked off yesterday. It’s the best State Fair in the country (not that I’m biased), drawing 2 million visitors, more than a third of Minnesota’s population.

I was there yesterday for the first day, and spent time with our Taste Team sampling the new foods and hanging out with our mascot, Stribby the Gray Duck.

The team even put together a trusty map, powered by AI, that allows people to maximize caloric intake while minimizing the steps required. That’s innovation!

But… before you think that putting down 300,000 ears of corn, 200 tons of french fries, and 2.1 million pickle chips at the State Fair every year means we’re unhealthy, somehow Minneapolis still remains one of the fittest cities in America:

What it’s been like here

It’s been over six months since the eyes of the country were on Minnesota during Operation Metro Surge. No news event has jolted our state more in the last few years. It has influenced our politics, culture, and economy in many ways. A snapshot:

• Growth in Minnesota has taken a hit, along with the rest of the Upper Midwest, which had the lowest GDP increase in the first three months of 2026

• The federal government is withholding nearly $200 million in Medicaid funding (they’re doing the same in CA) on claims of fraud

• Communities are still grappling with the cultural divisions that the Surge produced. This brilliant piece by the Strib’s Reid Forgrave (named “Journalist of the Year” in MN by the Society for Professional Journalists) tells that story in Pelican Rapids, MN

The mixture of pride, angst, and anticipation for what’s next is playing out in the Midterm elections, which have plenty of storylines that will shape our state’s identity in the months and years ahead. Minnesota set a record for primary voting with over 1 million people showing up to the polls (that’s 25% of eligible voters), and we saw traffic spike on our coverage at the rates we usually see in general elections.

Minnesotans — a people famous for civic-minded engagement — are showing up in 2026.

Meanwhile, our beloved Boundary Waters was on fire this summer - the aerial photos our photographers took are haunting for anyone (our family included) who’s spent time canoeing this pristine national wilderness. Governor Walz followed a month later with an executive order that banned copper nickel mining in the area, taking on a years-long debate on the issue in the final months of his time in office.

So yes, it has not been a slow news year in Minnesota. Some fun stuff since I last wrote:

• We now have the world’s largest nutcracker in Minnesota (65 feet tall)

• U of M researcher discovered a breakthrough “Spud Cell” that could one day create fuels and medicines without the need for toxic pollutants

• The Minnesota Lynx - who expected an off year - are once again the hottest team in the WNBA this season, thanks to rookie phenom Olivia Miles

• We’re on the cusp of being the national leader in Sustainable Aviation Fuel

The View from… Thailand

The highlight of the summer for our family was a special trip to Thailand to visit family. We traveled to the towns that both of Mary’s parents grew up in and got to see many family members that the kids and I had never met. Mary’s aunts and uncles and cousins showed us a great time, and the kids got to see a little of what life was like for their grandparents growing up. It gave us all even more appreciation for their journey to the U.S.

I’ve shared some of Mary’s family’s story in this newsletter before; her dad, John, was born into a family of fishermen in Uthai Thani, Thailand. He found his way into Catholic schools, then to the Vatican, and then (thankfully for our family) to the U.S., where he met Mary’s mom and started a family. Mary’s mom Susan grew up in a market town called Samut Songkhram, 90 minutes west of Bangkok, where they sold coconut sugar on the river. She found her way to the U.S. as a nurse, coming to Chicago in the 1970s.

We visited both of these places, and discovered that nine turns out to be a great age for such an adventure. The kids were full of wonder and curiosity. For all of us, imagining John and Susan as nine-year-olds themselves who could dream of one day moving to a new country to start a new life was humbling and powerful.

Summer Reading

A few books that I enjoyed this summer:

• The Gales of November - The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald by John U. Bacon

• Sightseeing by Rattawut Lapcharoensap

• American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins

• Buddhism, Plain and Simple by Steve Hagen

• The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

Thanks for reading, and come on by!

Yours,

Steve

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I hope you’re doing well and having a healthy and happy summer. Mary and the kids and I have been spending as much time outdoors as possible, with a few camping trips under our belts already and lots of time on Minnesota lakes.

Three updates for you in this edition of The View from Minnesota. Thanks as always for reading, and for being in touch.

Minnesota ranked #1 in Quality of Life

Yes, I know - Minnesotans tend to feel somewhat exceptional about ourselves (there’s a whole chapter in my book about this, and why it’s sometimes dangerous). But you can’t fault our exuberance too much when surveys like this come out. The “State of the States” survey, released in time for America’s 250th birthday, ranked Minnesota the best in the nation:

So how do you really judge such a thing as “quality of life?”

The criteria the survey used included 14 topics, from 1990-2024: Children and Families, Citizenship and Democracy, Civil Liberties, Economy, Education, Environment, Inequality, Work and Labor Force, Life Satisfaction, Mental Health, Physical Health, Social Capital, Trust, and Violence.

Notably missing: Weather (phew).

The high points, according to the Strib’s write-up:

Minnesotans have often been praised for their civic engagement, with other studies pointing to the state’s high voter turnout and activism. Progressive magazine the Nation recently nominated the city of Minneapolis for the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of the “countless acts of courage and solidarity” of residents during the Operation Metro Surge immigration crackdown last winter.

The low points:

The state was in the bottom half of the country for its environment — from high greenhouse gas emissions and low air quality — and civil liberties ratings…

…The category where Minnesota showcased the strongest downward trends was in residents’ mental health. Minnesota ranks 24th for depression across the U.S. and 12th for fatal overdoses and suicides. The state sits as one of the worst in the country for youth depression, with more than 20% of surveyed Minnesotan teens experiencing a major depressive episode in the past year, according to the report’s most recent data.

So yeah, these things are complicated (but it’s still nice to be #1).

The whole report is a worthwhile read on the state of America today. Check out the insights here.

Changes at the Strib

Earlier this month we rolled out a restructuring at the Strib to ready ourselves for the next chapter. It included laying off about 15% of our team, which was the hard part. It had been our hope to pull off a shift from a newspaper to a digital media company without having to go through a layoff, but I’ve yet to see that happen at any legacy news organization, from the New York Times on down. Thankfully we did not let go of reporters or photographers. But of course these moments are so hard.

The good part is that we also took the moment to make an announcement about our pursuit of a new ownership structure. The Strib’s owner, Glen Taylor, has long invested in sustaining the company, and when he brought me and our new team on board it was to re-invest in a rapid shift to a digital media future. I’ve shared some of that journey in this newsletter. Now our desire is to ensure the legacy of the Strib for the long haul, keeping it independent and rooted in Minnesota.

That’s led to exploring a model of ownership of the Strib by a foundation, which would create a path for others to support our work more significantly. There are some models to learn from, from the Philadelphia Inquirer to the Guardian to the Chicago Sun-Times and beyond. The idea is to create opportunity for philanthropy to play a stronger role in our revenue strategy, something I think is critical given the importance of local news to our communities.

We have work ahead to land this, but sharing our intentions publicly helps us do that alongside others. If you have advice or feedback, please reach out!

To hear more on our thinking, listen to a conversation I had with David Folkenflik on NPR’s Weekend Edition last week:

A year ago this week…

This week marked the first anniversary of publishing my story of returning to Minnesota, “How I Found Myself in the Midwest.” I still pinch myself that I had the chance to publish a book. It would never have been possible if I hadn’t started this newsletter and gotten help and encouragement from you all. Thank you again for your support, it’s meant a lot to me.

Much has happened in Minnesota since the book came out, as followers of this newsletter know well. The book was released a week after the Hortman assassinations; two months later a horrific school shooting rocked our community; earlier this year Operation Metro Surge brought the world’s attention to Minnesota for months. Yet there have been lots of joyful things unfolding here too. One of the big ideas I put forward in the book, that this part of the country is worth watching for so many reasons, has remained the case in good times and bad.

This year has revealed a lot about what Minnesota is made of, and often that’s been inspiring for others around the world.

Since the book’s publication, many have asked me about the process of writing a book. I’ve also met many who are working on projects of their own. While I’m no expert, I love talking about writing with people and recently published a few things I learned along the way. Here are a few:

📙 The process of writing teaches you about yourself. You start in one place and end in another. You circle back and re-examine, re-shape, re-imagine. Saying something original takes work, and that work helps your own thinking grow.

📙 You’ll be tempted to think it doesn’t matter - it does. There’s so much content out there, does what I have to say really matter? Don’t let the doubts take over - it does matter, because we all matter, and our stories make up the world we live in.

📙 People may question your intent - don’t listen. There are always going to be critics out there who question why you think your story is worth sharing, or what you’re trying to accomplish. Ignore them. That negative energy helps no one, let your writing speak for itself.

📙 The process of sharing with others teaches you about your community. I learned as much on my book tour as I did writing the book. Once a work is out there and you get to discuss it with people, your own understanding deepens. That’s one of the true gifts of sharing your work rather than keeping it bottled up.

📙 Be open and true. Write your own words. The book I wrote began as a project to write about the home I returned to. It ended up including a lot more about my own personal journey. At times I was worried about that - but it made the book better. And the positive feedback was almost always about the personal stuff I was nervous to include. Which made including it all the more rewarding.

Thank you all for reading, and have a wonderful July 4th weekend. Happy 250, America!

Yours,

Steve

This was a meaningful week at the Minnesota Star Tribune. We won the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News, for our coverage of the Annunciation school shooting last fall, which claimed the lives of two children, Harper Moyski and Fletcher Merkel, and wounded 18 others. It’s bittersweet to be recognized for a heartbreaking event, though I think that’s the case for many journalism awards. The hardest stories are the ones that carry the most meaning.

This was the eighth Pulitzer that the Strib has won since the awards began in 1917. The last time the organization won, it was for the coverage of George Floyd’s murder in 2020. It’s hard to know what the committee will choose, and it’s a sad truth that school shootings are common enough that it wasn’t certain this nomination would stand out. But the committee wrote in their summary that our coverage had “powerful stories marked by thoroughness and compassion.”

Our editor, Kathleen Hennessey, put it well when she shared why local news matters in these moments.

“For the journalists in our newsroom, it was personal and up close,” she said. “We felt responsible immediately to tell this story… to confirm the facts, to get to the scene, to make the pictures, to make the video, to be up close and to be there.”

I was proud of the care and compassion our team showed in reporting this gut-wrenching story. A video interview of a grieving student. Profiles of the slain children. An investigation of the shooter, which used both shoe-leather reporting and AI to decipher motive. And an iconic photo from Richard Tsong-Taatarii, of a mother removing her shoes to sprint to check on her children, that captured the terror of the moment in such a horrifying and relatable way.

Journalists, I’ve learned in my time at the Strib, are made of different stuff. They run towards danger, like the first responders who rushed to the scene of the shooting, to bear witness and capture the truth. One of our editors has children who were in the church when the shooting happened. She ran to check on her kids, then came back to the newsroom to share her account with colleagues.

Standing in the 12th floor news huddle in downtown Minneapolis, as the Pulitzer announcement played on the screen, was a special moment. For a group of people who’ve worked through so many tragic news events in the last year, it was deeply meaningful to see them celebrate this special recognition.

Prizes aren’t why journalists do the work, but they’re a reminder of how much it matters.

A meaningful speech for our family

As I shared late last year, we recently lost Mary’s dad, John. He was a huge presence in our lives and someone I loved and deeply admired. Though he lived in San Diego, we were close. Both of Mary’s parents are now gone, and we think about them every day.

I was so proud of Mary for sharing their story in an inspiring commencement address at the University of Minnesota last week. Both John and Susan immigrated to the U.S., and met here - so Mary’s got double-scrappy genes. They built a chiropractic business out of nothing, raised three amazing kids, and had a big impact on their community.

Hearing Mary share their story with the graduates of the U’s School for Continuing and Professional studies was especially poignant. Over two-thirds of the student body are people of color, and well over half are first-generation college students. In the wake of the immigration raids in Minnesota, many had lived through a traumatic final few months of college.

But I’ve never seen a more excited crowd at graduation, and Mary’s message hit home.

I'm pretty sure Mary’s parents were looking down from above, beaming with pride. I know me, Luke, and Lottie were. Here's the speech.

With love,

Steve

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When I scroll through the headlines of my last several “View from Minnesota” newsletters, it’s easy to see why readers might have a melancholy view of our state. I’m an optimistic person, but boy have a lot of challenges hit home here over the last few years.

But you know what? The view from Minnesota is good. To prove it, here are 7 cool things that have happened recently, pulled from the pages of the Strib (naturally).

7 great things in Minnesota

1. The Boss came to town. And he blew the roof off the Target Center. Of course his “Streets of Minneapolis” ballad to our state in the wake of Operation Metro Surge is a powerful anthem. Even more powerful was his two minute welcome to his show, which touches on so many big themes America is grappling with right now - in a way only the Boss can.

   

2. We have our own Batman. Okay, his name is “NoMark,” but he’s a masked, anonymous do-gooder (and online influencer) who goes around doing good deeds in the cover of dark. As our story reported, “the superhero’s power perhaps lies less in his personally stopping or solving crimes than encouraging his fans to shrug off their bystander malaise and take more responsibility for their community’s well-being.”

   What could be more Minnesotan than that?

3. We have the only un-mapped neighborhood on Google Maps. North Oaks, where the streets are owned by residents, has banned Google’s mapping vehicles - so a local YouTuber named Chris Parr used a drone to do the job on his own. The result was a viral video… and a wave of takedown requests to Google.

3. We’re having a running boom. Yesterday I ran a half marathon put on by Twin Cities in Motion, and was amazed at how many others showed up on a cold rainy April morning to do the same. The truth is, America’s having a running boom and Minnesota is helping fuel it. Both the Twin Cities and Grandma’s marathon are nearing the top ten for attendance in the country, and both are consistently rated among the most beautiful races in the America.

3. The 1,000 handshakes of Mike Conley. The popular vet for the title-contending Timberwolves has turned handshakes into an entirely different language. I love the videos in this piece that showcase the seemingly infinite number of elaborate handshakes he has with teammates and friends.

   “I’ve always felt that it’s a way to personally connect to people that’s beyond the game,” Conley. “It’s just a way that when I see you, you see me.”

   Go Wolves!

6. You can buy a giant red barn on a 20-acre lot with a movie theatre, bank, a pond, and high-speed internet (for $1.4M). Located between Alexandria and Detroit Lakes, this passion project hits all the benefits of rural living with all the trappings of luxury included — and it’s on the market. For any readers on the coasts with money to spare and a desire for a soft landing here in the promised land, here ya go.

   

7. Prince, of course. Yes, we’re proud he was from here, but this month was the 10th anniversary of his passing — which gave us an excuse to pump up our pride. Our new podcast at the Strib, Essential Minnesota, took a deeper look at Prince’s life from our music critic of 50+ years, Jon Bream, who knew him from the beginning. And our team created this great map of the 37 top Prince sites in Minnesota, which does a wonderful job of telling the story of his extraordinary journey here.

Public funding for News

When you have strong local news in a community, research shows you get better outcomes in voter turnout, volunteering, and public engagement — and lower polarization. All good things for our democracy. Yet after 3 years at the Strib, I’ve become more convinced that local news business models need more than only subscriptions and advertising to thrive at scale. Public funding, done smartly, can be part of the formula.

That’s why I went to the state capitol in St. Paul to make the case, with many other local news leaders. There are lots of models to pull from, pioneered by the Rebuild Local News coalition, in Maryland, California, Connecticut and beyond. We’re pushing for a payroll tax incentive for hiring journalists in Minnesota. Of course, any model needs strict guardrails to ensure funding doesn’t influence coverage — but it can be done.

If we fund broadband, road construction, healthcare, and other civic goods with public dollars, then why not journalism?

The local news rally in St. Paul was also an excuse to set a record: for the largest gray duck to ever waddle through our state capitol. Stribby (our mascot) made quite an impression, and drew lots of legislators to the rotunda.

North Star Summit, the sequel - join us!

We’re back! After a great inaugural year, our first-ever ideas festival - the North Star Summit - is back. It’ll be September 22-23 at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. I’d love to see you there: book your tickets while they’re still available, and come visit us this fall - the best time of year in Minnesota.

3D printing the future

Last week, Mary and I worked with our new partners at the U of M to gather our Silicon North Stars for a visit to Stratasys, a fascinating industrial 3D printing company. The kids got an up-close look at how 3D printing is used in everything from medical training to automobile manufacturing to fashion and beyond. Now that Luke and Lottie are old enough to join us, we’re having fun bringing them along on these visits too.

Our Silicon North Stars are so dedicated and sharp, and continue to give us so much hope for the future.

Thanks for reading and Happy Spring!

Yours,

Steve

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It’s been over a month since Operation Metro Surge ended in Minnesota. After going through through a crisis at the scale our state has, the aftermath can feel… disorienting. What exactly happened here? What does it mean? What happens next? People often speak about the fog of war, but the fog of the aftermath also exists. The clarity that can come with a crisis often gives way to a grayer zone in how a community comes back.

Three of the themes emerging as Minnesota digs out from the storm:

Understanding what happened. There is still a lot we don’t know about the ICE raids in Minnesota. The Strib’s newsroom has been fact-checking statements made by federal and local officials, investigating the upheaval in the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and collaborating with other newsrooms to discover who the 4,000 people ICE says they detained are. Not to mention the ongoing investigations into the actions of ICE agents and the legal battles ahead. The original justification for the ICE surge in our state centered on the state government fraud in social services, which will continue to be a topic the Strib investigates.

Minnesota Pride. There is a sense of pride amongst many in our state about how Minnesotans responded to the ICE raids, which I wrote about in my last newsletter (What’s next?). We’ve had national media visit and write about how Minnesota responded. Native son Tom Friedman wrote a reported column in the NYT about “why Minnesota is more important than Iran to America’s future.” Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway came to town for an episode of Pivot and raised $150,000 for the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota. Glamour wrote a profile of the women holding Minneapolis together.

And just this week, the “People of the Twin Cities” won the JFK Profile in Courage Award.

Of course, like any place, Minnesota doesn’t speak with one voice: in many parts of Greater Minnesota, the view of the last few months isn’t the same as the Twin Cities, as columns like this one from the mayor of Cross Lake in northern MN demonstrate.

Building what’s next. People are trying to return to state of normalcy, but it takes awhile - especially for communities who don’t feel safe. It’s a little like the aftermath of COVID: how quickly people return to normal routines varies by community and risk tolerance. At the annual economic development conference of Greater MSP, the economic development org for the region, you could feel a desire in the packed crowd for new momentum. The celebrated arrival of Pivot Bio, a billion-dollar biotech company who relocated here from Silicon Valley, drew enormous enthusiasm from a crowd eager to find reasons to celebrate. And this video featuring Tonya Allen, president of the McKnight Foundation, on the “Spirit of Minnesota” had many cheering.

With the Minnesota legislature in session, and an election season underway, the debates about what Minnesota needs next are in high gear. As the snow melts, hope springs eternal.

AI & local news

When I started at the Strib almost 3 years ago, one of the things we knew was that change would only get faster every year — and we have to run towards the future rather than being swept into it. But these last 3 months have brought a step change in AI development that easily outpaces anything I’ve seen so far.

The AI models have gotten so much better, and Claude Code has changed the world of the possible for development. It took me less than 10 minutes the other day to create a daily Strib news quiz, complete with a dancing gray duck if you got more than five questions right. As someone who doesn’t code, it felt magical and mysterious to build something so quickly.

Like many in the news industry, I’m questioning every aspect of our business model right now. We can now build new things faster, operate more efficiently, and create new products for our audience. But: when people can get answers from a chatbot or AI assistant, then why go to a local news platform? We have to give them a reason to, every day.

Pew recently reported that 92% of Americans don’t think they need to pay for news (oof). If they instead buy subscriptions to services like Claude, Chat GPT, or Gemini, then do they have room in their subscription wallet for news? And when trust in news is at record lows, how do we build that trust back by reminding people our biggest differentiator is we have real people doing real journalism?

It’s on us to figure that out, and to be assertive in our use of AI, with some basic principles: Be curious and experiment. Be intentional and transparent. Keep Humans in the loop to ensure accuracy. Protect sensitive information and IP. Keep talking to each other about it.

Our ability to grow in this next wave of technology change will have everything to do with how quickly we can anticipate and adapt to how people get news - and how well we remind the world why real journalism matters.

Sharing what we’re learning

Given all that Minnesota has been through these past few months, many leaders here have had a chance to share what we’ve learned during yet another crucible for crisis leadership. I’ve had a few opportunities to reflect with some thoughtful people recently, here are a few clips.

Good Leadership Breakfast

Ready: Leaders to Know podcast

Poynter Center podcast on Reporting through a crisis

Carleton College Convocation

Breaking a 94-year drought

High school sports is the gift that keeps giving for the Minnesota Star Tribune. My favorite Strib Varsity story this month is about the Northfield High School boys basketball team that broke a 94-year drought and returned to the state tournament this year.

Proud of my alma mater, GO RAIDERS! :)

Thanks for reading, and happy (almost) Spring!

Yours,

Steve

With the announcement this week that Operation Metro Surge is coming to a close, Minnesotans await what this next chapter holds for us. What’s happened here might slip from national headlines, but the impact of the ICE raids on our state, and our country’s democratic norms, will continue.

Over 4,000 people were arrested during the surge. Minneapolis estimates businesses lost $203 million through the end of January, and one in five residents need food assistance. A survey of 90 Latino-owned businesses estimates a third have shut down. Home sales in the Twin Cities dropped nearly 20% last month. 14 federal prosecutors resigned from the US Attorney’s office, and two journalists were arrested.

Worst of all, two people — Renee Good and Alex Pretti — were killed by ICE agents.

The collective impact from all of these tragedies combined are deep questions about our democracy and rule of law — and our trust in the federal government. The bloody spectacle in our streets drew global attention because it often didn’t feel like America.

To rebuild, as our Minnesota Star Tribune Editorial Board wrote, our nation needs transparency into what took place here, an investigation into the homicides of the two victims, and a serious reckoning with the structure and practices of ICE, the agency at the center of the crisis.

Sometimes a community breaks, but heals back stronger. Minnesota — and America’s — ability to do that will be the topic of many discussions moving forward in our state and country.

Minnesota Pride — and a playbook?

If what happened at the hands of ICE didn’t feel like America, the response of Minnesotans has felt deeply American. Since Mary and I moved our family here almost 8 years ago, I don’t think I’ve heard more people share how proud they are of our state than I have in these last few months. This crisis has often reminded me the reasons why this is a special place to live, many of which I shared in my book last year.

People in our state have also begun to write a playbook, on the fly, of how a place can respond to such a crisis:

• Peaceful & organized protests where tens of thousands of people exercised their first amendment rights

• A distributed leadership model that flexes to the needs of the community

• Bystanders who documented every turn of this story, making it the most documented crisis in American history

• A relief effort for families and businesses in need, that spanned communities across the state

• A fight against misinformation and AI agents coordinating to sow confusion

• A local news ecosystem that rose to the occasion to ensure fact-based reporting reached the world

• A philanthropy & corporate community that responds with funds for small businesses (even while the feds pull back SBA loans for green card holders)

One thing I think has led to a sense of pride and connection is the shared experience we’ve had. For many communities in our state, being targeted by your government is actually not a new feeling. As this biting SNL skit from a few weeks ago reminds us, “unprecedented” is in the eyes of the beholder. But in these last two months, far more communities have the experience of feeling harassed by a government authority. Maybe that brings people closer.

There is still plenty of division in Minnesota, and people’s reactions to this crisis are far from uniform — just like opinions on the issue of immigration. But something in the water here has changed, and people looking for hope are finding it in a sense of pride that could turn into something productive.

This week, I attended the annual Explore Minnesota Tourism conference in Duluth, which was scheduled long before Operation Metro Surge began. Leaders there told me that 80% of tourism industry businesses have taken significant cancellations since the ICE raid began. But: online sentiment analysis and surveys indicate that there’s “revenge tourism” on the horizon, they shared.

I hope they’re right.

If you’ve ever thought about visiting Minnesota, now’s a great time!

A rallying cry for local news

As I wrote in a column for our pages last week, this moment has been a reminder of the power of local news in a crisis. Here at the Strib, we’ve received donations from 45 states plus Puerto Rico, ranging from $5 - $40,000. Subscription growth doubled over the last month, and donations have almost 10x’d — many coming in from out of state. As I shared in the column:

I believe that local news organizations are poised to provide the most value in times of crisis. Our journalists know our neighbors and our neighborhoods. They know our leaders and organizers. They understand our history. The depth of familiarity and local nuance they bring to breaking and quickly evolving news is unrivaled. It’s been heartening to see so many national outlets praise the work of local media during their time in Minnesota.

To the many people getting this newsletter who aren’t from Minnesota - THANK YOU for thinking of us, it means a lot.

Juxtaposed to this local news rallying cry, we saw the Washington Post lay off 300 journalists last week, a majority of them in local roles. I found it both shocking and not surprising at all. We face the same headwinds as the WaPo does, and the entire industry faces a similar fate if we don’t find new models to pay for strong local reporting, which is the journey we’re on at the Strib.

A new effort to fight fake news

Though we hadn’t planned to do it so quickly, our plans to launch a news literacy effort at the Strib went into overdrive this month as misinformation has run rampant around this crisis. The incident I shared with you about being mistaken for the ICE shooter of Renee Good is just one small example of the challenges we face.

Our team saw the moment and launched a News Literacy Initiative focused on helping high school students sharpen their news-reading habits. Nearly 80% of high school students say they see conspiracy theories online every week, and 94% believe news literacy should be required in high school. Yet today, only a small number of schools offer any formal news literacy training.

Our ambition, if we can raise $1 million, is to put a free Star Tribune subscription in the hands of every high school student in Minnesota, and to support news literacy training in every high school across the state. Our partners at the News Literacy Project — the gold-standard provider of high school news literacy curriculum — will help with the training, but we know this will be a big lift. If you have ideas or feedback for me, please reach out!

Team USA is also Team Minnesota

Did you know Minnesota has the second-most Winter Olympians of any state in the country? (Dang it, Colorado). We also have the oldest Winter Olympian on the team, a 54-year-old lawyer from Brooklyn Park, Rich Ruohonen. He’s on the curling team.

It’s been a welcome reprieve from the chaos to watch our finest athletes battle it out in Italy on the global stage. Live updates here.

Ruohonen’s day job is a lawyer, and he used his time in the spotlight at the Olympics to speak out about what’s happening in his home state:

“We have a Constitution. It allows us freedom of the press, freedom of speech, protects us from unreasonable searches and seizures, and makes it so we have to have probable cause to be pulled over. And what’s happening in Minnesota is wrong. There’s no shades of gray.”

Thank you all for reading, and for the support and advice you continue to share with me here in Minnesota.

If you know anyone who’d like to be getting these updates, please forward this along so they can subscribe.

Yours,

Steve

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I can’t remember a time when Minnesota has been the national headline for so many days in a row. We’re almost two months into Operation Metro Surge, with 3,000 federal agents in our streets. And yesterday, another tragic killing: this time of a 37-year-old ICU nurse named Alex Pretti in South Minneapolis. He was killed just miles from our home on Eat Street, one of our family’s favorite neighborhoods to visit.

Just a day before, 50,000 Minnesotans braved -20 degree weather to peacefully protest the ICE raids. Their hope was that it might help turn the tide. But another killing less than 24 hours later makes that much less clear.

Minnesota can’t keep living like this. America can’t keep living like this. To feel at odds with your own federal government is a deeply unsettling feeling.

The community here isn’t waiting for the cavalry; it’s them. It’s neighbors who are looking out for each other, feeding each other, protecting one another. It’s bystanders in the streets documenting what’s happening. It’s our local journalists covering every painful twist in this dark story. It’s the clergy urging for peace and praying for resolution. It’s the officers and National Guard trying to keep people safe and de-escalate tensions.

The world can’t look away

The usual cycle in today's low-attention media world is something happens, we all pay attention for a moment, and then move on. But what’s happening here feels different, because with each turn the events get more and more relevant to everyone.

One reason is this moment is so visual, and so human. Whether its graphic videos of the killings, images of agents chasing kids down the street, snapshots of children being ushered into cars and deported, shots of protestors scuffling with law enforcement, or thousands protesting in the streets, this might be the most well-documented crisis in recent American history, as this excellent New York Times compilation shows.

Those visceral images draw us in and demand our attention. They are as difficult as they are relatable - this could be happening in any American city.

The competing claims with each image further spark debate. The federal government says one thing, bystanders say another. News orgs like ours fact check every statement, and analyze every frame of the videos. We’re all looking at the same images and videos, but we’re not seeing the same thing.

Most of the groups involved in this crisis want the images to hold our attention. I was talking with some photographers this week, who told me that despite the examples of ICE agents swatting away cellphone cameras, generally the agency wants coverage. Agents told them that the video and images from news orgs and bystanders help discourage immigrants from coming to the country, and discourages protestors from going too far.

What’s happening in Minnesota feels fundamental to our American identity. And that will keep holding people’s attention, no matter what you think that identity should be.

Calling for pause

I can’t remember the last time our Editorial Board wrote 3 pieces on behalf of the institution in 10 days, but the moment so clearly demands it. When they write a collective opinion, it’s designed to be measured, clear, and helpful. I thought they delivered with their latest, a call for the obvious: a pause in ICE activity to find a path to peace.

Of course, the Ed Board operates independently of the newsroom — a distinction some people aren’t aware of, just like the fact that I don’t direct our news coverage, our newsroom editors do.

The power of a homepage

Despite our focus on digital at the Strib, there is still so much power in the front page of a newspaper. Lately, our team’s front pages have been going viral online. Here’s one from Jan 23:

Praying for Peace

Our family joined thousands of other Minnesotans last night to pray for peace. The sub-zero temps didn’t keep people away - parks across the city were packed. It was a reminder that coming together is powerful, and starting local gives us glimmers of hope for healing.

Thanks for reading, and for paying attention.

With love,

Steve

PS. If you want to learn more about what the Strib is doing to empower people to spread and support real journalism in this moment, we have some new initiatives here.

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Thank you to all who have reached out with support for our state in the past few weeks, as the crisis between federal law enforcement and people in Minnesota has continued. No matter your view of immigration policy or enforcement, the chaos unfolding here should concern everyone.

The view from Minnesota is this: the stunning set of events in our state is calling into question some of the basic principles of life in America.

A quick summary of the most serious developments:

• U.S. Citizens are being picked up and detained; the ACLU is suing the federal government for alleged racial profiling.

• The investigation of the killing of Renee Nicole Good has been politicized, and her wife is now under investigation for what administration officials are calling “domestic terrorism.”

• ICE agents are allegedly targeting observers & citizen reporters who are documenting what’s happening in our streets.

• Daycares and schools say that ICE is targeting them.

• Our state’s governor and Minneapolis’s mayor are being investigated by the Department of Justice

• A major resignation of the majority of the U.S. Attorney’s office leadership in Minnesota, including the lead prosecutor on state government fraud, because of directives from top federal officials, according to sources.

These feel like headlines written for another time, in another country. But they’re happening in Minnesota. Why ?

These isn’t just one answer. But probably the best analysis I’ve read so far is from a NYT reporter who used to work in the state, Charles Homans. It’s well worth the read, and his subtitle says it well:

The state embodies a civic ideal that the administration in Washington wants to discredit.

There are real issues worth debating about the kind of country we want to live in. But it’s hard to have a serious conversation when human decency and basic norms fall away.

At every turn of this crisis, facts matter. The truth matters. Good journalism matters.

How we’re navigating this moment

Our newsroom at the Strib has dozens of reporters fanned out across the state, covering every angle they can. As publisher, I’m an audience to that journalism - which is driven entirely by our editors. Reporters are volunteering to work extra shifts, weekend hours, and are spending time getting the story right. And now that the Strib has a statewide focus, we have the people in place to cover the story across Minnesota, because it isn’t just happening in the Twin Cities.

All of our live blog - our most important feed of events as they unfold - is outside the paywall, free to the public.

Meanwhile, disinformation campaigns like the one I shared in my last newsletter continue - and our journalists are working to counter them online. Our editors are focused on keeping people safe with increased security tools and strategies. Donations have come in to make sure newsrooms in Minnesota can afford training and gear to prepare for possible escalations. Those funds make a difference.

Over in our opinion pages, our Editorial Board has been leaning forward. In the last few years, we’ve modernized our opinion section to focus on individual voices and bylines from a growing number of contributors. But this is a moment when the Ed Board felt their collective voice mattered more. The piece they wrote calling for an end to ICE overreach has travelled far, and proved again that in certain moments the voice of an institution matters.

A citizen reporting rally cry

When I began my career in tech at YouTube, we spent a lot of time working with citizen reporters who used Flip Cams and early cellphones to upload grainy footage of breaking news events around the world. Their work was defining during the Arab Spring, and many pivotal global events. But I couldn’t have imagined that user-generated content would play such a big role in journalism in my own home state.

Today, videos from people in the streets of our cities are providing an expansive view of events. So much so, that our governor specifically asked people to document this moment in his televised address on January 14.

Our reporters have been using this footage in their analysis and reporting, alongside their own. Reporter Greta Kaul from our team wrote about why this is a “breakout moment” for online video.

“There’s always a stream of news online. But this is different. Videos from people documenting ICE’s presence in Minnesota are breaking through to an almost-unavoidable degree — giving people an unprecedented view of what’s happening on the ground.”

Engaging the nation

We know that nation is watching what happens here. A January 9 Economist/YouGov poll said that 91% of Americans have heard of the ICE shooting in Minneapolis, and 69% said they’ve seen video of the incident.

The poll is worth a look, it highlights how political viewpoints shape opinions of federal actions.

Our journalists have been busy engaging national outlets, too - going on as guests to share context from the ground. It’s a powerful opportunity to share the power of local reporters covering a crisis, who bring decades of experience to the communities they cover. Here are just a few examples: PBS News Hour, On the Media, News Nation, ABC News, NPR News.

How you can help

There are lots of ways to help Minnesota right now, but if you’re looking for ways to support journalism specifically, here are a few things I shared with readers in my Publisher’s Note this week:

• Pay attention to the coverage. Simply spending time with our report is an act of service. It can be tempting to ignore the media blitz, shrug off inconvenient truths, or let it all wash by you and hope it goes away. But reading local news coverage, from us and others, makes a difference. An informed public is a powerful force in our democracy.

• Amplify great journalism. Please consider sharing our coverage across social media, group chats, or any other communities you’re a part of – it makes a difference. The more we can amplify the truth, the better we can fight back disinformation.

• Donate or subscribe - to us or others. A free press comes at a real cost. We’re keeping as much of our journalism outside the paywall as we can right now. You can donate to the Minnesota Star Tribune Local News Fund, or to any other local media outlet you trust.

Thank you for your support, and for keeping Minnesota in your hearts.

Yours,

Steve

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I hadn’t planned to send another newsletter so soon, but tragically our state is once again under fire. The fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good by an ICE officer this week punctuated a brutal moment in which our city feels under siege. It’s hard to overstate how fraught things are here, as the administration has turned its attention on Minnesota. My heart is heavy for the family and friends of Ms. Good, and for all the families who are living in fear right now.

The Strib is hard at work doing what our newsroom does best - pursuing breaking, complex stories and getting people the truth. Our reporters are facing danger on the streets and online and I’m very proud of their work, which you can follow at the Strib.

Disinformation hits our doorstep

If there’s one thing you can depend on when tragedy strikes today, it’s this: conspiracy theorists and bad actors will spring into action online. They often masquerade as journalists, spreading fake news in coordinated campaigns designed to confuse or inflict harm.

This week, in the hours after the shooting of Renee Nicole Good by a masked ICE agent in south Minneapolis, they chose a strange target — me.

Just hours after the shooting, my phone began to buzz. I’m used to being tagged in social media posts about the Star Tribune’s coverage, but as I scrolled through the notifications, I saw something else entirely: hundreds of posts claiming that the ICE agent who shot Renee Nicole Good was Steve Grove of Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Screenshots of an officer approaching Good’s minivan were labeled with my name, accompanied by explicit calls for vigilante justice.

“Let’s find his address… we will be his nightmare!” one post read. Thousands more followed, many using far harsher language.

Coincidence?

At first, I worried it was a horrible coincidence — that I shared a name with the shooter. But our newsroom hadn’t yet identified the ICE agent’s name, and as I looked more closely at the posts, something didn’t add up. The officer’s face looked subtly off, and he wasn’t wearing the mask seen in the videos of the shooting.

What was going on?

I called on friends to help me figure it out. One of them was Renée DiResta, an expert in online disinformation. She explained how online actors sometimes use Grok and other publicly available AI tools to “unmask” people in photographs. That appeared to be exactly what had happened here.

“What I would guess happened next is that someone uploaded that AI-generated image to a reverse image search platform, where it surfaced the name Steve Grove,” DiResta told me.

That explanation matched reporting by the Springfield Daily Citizen in Missouri, which interviewed another Steve Grove whose physical resemblance to the ICE agent was striking. He, too, was attacked online.

Diresta added that this behavior has become commonplace. “People often genuinely think they’re pursuing justice or helping their community, but the impact of the false positives can be terrible for the people named,” she told me.

Morphing into an attack on the Strib

Even if we assume the intent of some of these efforts is good, the online mobs that rally quickly turn such campaigns into a disinformation nightmare.

A Minnesota-based behavioral intelligence startup called Gudea, which tracks how false social media claims go viral on the internet, tracked more than 5,000 posts claiming Steve Grove was the shooter. Within eight hours, they’d spread to seven different online platforms, and were being pushed a mixture of influencers, outliers, power players – and lots of bots. Soon, many threads metastasized into criticism of the Strib’s journalism.

“Once the lie came out, it just kept feeding on itself,” said Jonathan Sperber, Gudea’s co-founder.

For online mobs fueled by falsehoods, truth isn’t an inconvenience. It’s totally irrelevant. Once there’s a thread of controversy and a target, they pounce. The connection — however false — to the publisher of the Minnesota Star Tribune only made the target more appealing.

Even after our newsroom identified the real identity of the shooter, and national outlets like The Washington Post, NPR, Wired and others covered the story of this misinformation campaign, the rumors kept pouring in.

Unfortunately, the episode felt all too familiar. From the June 2025 political assassinations of former speaker of the Minnesota House Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark, to the August 2025 Annunciation School shooting, to countless other tragedies in our state, misinformation on social media spreads faster than anyone can counter it.

We live in a world where speculation increasingly comes before verification. Outrage is rewarded, and the anonymity of the internet gives people a powerful vehicle to weaponize it.

Compare that with the work created by professionally trained and experienced journalists. When our journalists use AI, they do so carefully and responsibly — as our investigative team did during the Annunciation shooting to analyze massive amounts of data, with humans in the loop, to better understand the shooter’s motive.

You won’t find that commitment to truth or objectivity in an angry online mob.

Yet another reminder

I’m not sharing this story to ask for sympathy, that belongs entirely to the family and friends of Ms. Good, and to the thousands of Minnesotans who are living in fear right now.

I’m sharing it as yet another reminder for us to consider how we consume social media in moments of crisis. Rarely are you going to get the truth from following waves of online rage or vigilantism.

It’s also a reminder of the political tribalism we face in our country right now, as our Strib reporters have covered. As David Sturrock, a political science professor at Southwest Minnesota State University, shared on our pages:

“The impulse to ride confirmation bias to rushed conclusions has gone into hyperdrive in the social media age. A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes… And that was during the age of telegraphs.”

Instead, I hope people can remember in this moment the simple fact that the best place to get your news is directly from a trusted news organization. And the best way to support one is to subscribe, donate, or help sustain one you love.

Thank you

Many of you have reached out personally to check in this week, and Mary and I are grateful. We’re fine, and focused on what we can do to help right now. If you can, say a prayer for Minnesota.

Yours,

Steve

In a year when I published a book that explores what makes my home state unique, I got to have hundreds of conversations with neighbors about Minnesota and where we’re headed. Our state has so much going for it, but 2025 was a sobering gut check.

I’m ending the year with a simple reflection that this is a time to take nothing for granted. All the things that make our country great only survive when we invest in them. My most recent column in the Minnesota Star Tribune reflects on what that means for our work to re-boot a 158-year old newspaper - and why it matters now more than ever to have a statewide news organization that works.

The case for size and scale in journalism is clear, and particularly important in local news. From my column:

The irony of taking nothing for granted is that it’s actually empowering. The only reason that anything we love exists is that people worked hard to create it, and that gives me inspiration that we all can build things that endure - when we believe in each other.

Fox News comes at the Strib

As Minnesota found itself in the national spotlight for a social services fraud scandal in state government that we’ve been reporting on for years, the work of our newsroom has - not surprisingly - come under fire by anyone with a political agenda. Fox News published a piece this week that claimed bias in our reporting, and called me out personally for my role previously working for the governor to claim we’re pulling our punches.

I get why that’s a juicy line of attack, but the facts don’t support it. A simple Google search shows that no other media outlet has investigated and reported social services fraud in Minnesota more than the Minnesota Star Tribune. To be precise, our newsroom has written 274 articles and 138 front page stories on the topic, one we’ve been tracking for years. This week we published a comprehensive look at what Minnesotans need to know.

But of course, if people think we’re biased, factual examples to the contrary don’t always carry the day. I wish that they did. I’ve heard these criticism ever since I became CEO, but I don’t control our journalism - or influence political stories. The journalism we produce is the job of our independent editor and our journalists.

Finding the same topics we’ve been reporting on for years land on the front page of the New York Times this month, without major revelations beyond what the Strib’s reporters have already produced, was another validation that they’re doing their job.

Finding joy in wrapping up 2025

One thing I’ve come to love about working at a news organization is all of our end-of-year reflections. There was much to be joyful about this year. Our Sportsperson of the Year, Phil Esten, brought the University of St. Thomas into NCAA Division 1 with perseverance and class. Our Artist of the Year, Dyani White Hawk, won a MacArthur Genius Award and was a prolific and generous leader in the community. Our best new restaurant of the year was started by 25-year old Eric Pham whose homage to his mother’s cooking brought them back together. And our 2025 Year in Photos package was particularly stunning this year.

We’re celebrating it all on January 3rd at The Wrap, our second-annual year-in-review fundraiser that takes a look at Minnesota through the lens of our journalism in a fantastic immersive experience (if you’re in town, tickets are still available).

Remembering a giant in our family

We lost someone very special in our family this month - Mary’s dad, John. It’s hard to put into words how much he meant to us, though Mary did a wonderful job in the obituary she wrote. John was like a second dad to me, an inspirational person who I loved very much.

His life story itself in inspiring. He grew up in rural Thailand, made his way through a Catholic education all the way up to the Vatican, where he trained to be a priest - then shifted gears and bet it all on America. He came to the U.S. with nothing, landed a PhD in philosophy and then a chiropractic degree, then drove out west to San Diego and started a business from scratch to support his family. His daughter (my amazing wife) went on to Stanford, Google, and now runs a VC firm that invests in the next generation of healthcare startups. Talk about full circle.

Beyond Dad’s crazy and inspiring life story, he was just a great person. We became fast friends and could go hours talking about spirituality, music, philosophy, politics, or anything else in the world. We often played Madden together and he routinely beat me, well into his 70s. My Vikings were no match for his Chargers.

I learned so much from him - about family, perseverance, the importance of constant curiosity, and about love. Seeing how much he loved his wife Susan, and his three kids Mary, Annie, and Joe, was powerful. I aspire to show that same love and dedication to my own family and kids.

Our year is ending in grief for his loss, but also in gratitude for the life he made possible for us all. I’ll never be able to thank him enough for what he’s done for me and for our family.

Thank you for reading

I’ll end with heartfelt thanks to all of you for reading A View from Minnesota this year. This newsletter took on a new cadence and focus this year and I’m grateful to you for reading. Your support of my book this year was overwhelming, as were your notes of encouragement. I feel very lucky to have such a caring community, and I hope this final note of 2025 finds you healthy and able to find joy in this world, and the resolve to make it better.

Happy Holidays! I hope to see you all in 2026.

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For example: AI threatens to fundamentally change how people find our content, but it’s also helping us do everything from layout to content tagging to ad sales more efficiently. Lawsuits against news organizations and threats against journalists can make our very existence feel uncertain, but our daily report is bringing light and transparency to our state. An uncertain economic climate presents huge revenue pressure on advertising, but we’re also finding new ways to make money.

To be a publisher in local news these days is to live in a world of extremes. The trick is not to run around with your hair on fire, but to use crisis to generate every bit of positive momentum you can.

We hold regular town halls and company updates, and I send a note to the company every Friday morning on all that’s going on. These moments to discuss the challenges and momentum of the work are important.

Yet I’ve found the best way to balance urgency & optimism with our team is simply in the day-to-day. Finding time to thank people for their hard work. Never sugarcoating the challenges, but bringing a spirit of finding solutions. Always remembering to have a laugh when we can, even in the face of grim challenges. We can take the work seriously - but taking ourselves too seriously never helps.

With the public, being optimistic and open is vital if we want the community to root for us. One of the things I’ve discovered about being a statewide local newspaper is that sometimes your audience assumes that you can cover it all, and that any editorial priority they have should also be yours. While I don’t direct our news coverage (that’s our editor’s job), I take a lot of incoming from people about our journalism. You should have had the “No Kings” protest on your print homepage. You need more conservative voices in your opinion pages. Why did you remove the T.V. Guide from your print paper? (this decision drew the most complaints I’ve ever gotten, believe it or not.)

I’ve learned that if we’re doing it right, we’re getting incoming from all sides and engaging in an honest conversation with our audience. I send a regular “Publisher’s Note” to our subscribers in an effort to bring them along on our transformation.

The thing that gives me the most hope is the team we’ve built. Our leadership team is the best we’ve ever had, and we’ve attracted great talent across the organization. If we succeed in transforming the Strib into a viable modern media organization, it will be because of our people.

Some new things: North Star Insider, MN Rising, High School Sports

In my last newsletter I talked about the launch of our investigative team, which continues to break big stories (our most recent was a partnership with ProPublica that exposed a Duluth church that told victims of sexual abuse to “forgive and forget”). But we’re also launching new things that bring a sense of energy and optimism to the state.

Building off our first-ever ideas festival last month, this month we launched the North Star Insider - a twice-weekly newsletter that shares insights and scoops on Minnesota’s dynamic business climate. It’s written by Ali Kaplan, a new leader in our newsroom who’s long been a top business journalist in Minnesota. It’s quickly becoming a must-read for business readers.

We’ve also almost finished our first high school sports season with Strib Varsity, our new platform for prep sports that’s gotten national attention. A one-stop-shop with livestreams, scores, stats, and great journalism, Strib Varsity’s goal is to be the most comprehensive high school sports platform in local sports. It’s helping us drive digital subscriptions based on the timeless idea that if your kid’s in the paper, you’re going to want to pick up a copy.

And our advertising team kicked off a new sponsored content initiative called MN Rising, where businesses in Minnesota can tell stories of doing good in the community through our ad sales channels. It’s a new way for us to make money by bringing positive stories to the market (we all know we need them!).

From the road

I’m writing this newsletter from Des Moines, Iowa, where I was touring our new printing partner for the Strib here and tacked on a book talk at Beaverdale Books in town.

This last month has been full of some of the more meaningful book talks I’ve been able to do, including one at our church with our Pastor Lisa Wiens Heinsohn (who’s featured in my book) and our Bishop Craig Loya. I also spoke at the Westminster Town Hall Forum, a beautiful venue in downtown Minneapolis, for their series on Ethics, Conscience, and the Public Square.

One thing I’ve learned as a first-time author is that a book is never static. While the core messages of How I Found Myself in the Midwest are there, the topics I explore take on new meaning as the world changes. It’s been enriching to see conversations about the book adapt and reflect as current events spin forward.

Momentum for a message of hope, the power of going local, and the importance of community continue to come through in these conversations that I feel very lucky to get to have.

Thanks as always for reading, and have a lovely Thanksgiving.

Yours,

Steve

The view from Minnesota this week came from a fresh stage, our first-ever ideas festival at the Minnesota Star Tribune, the North Star Summit. We designed this pilot concept to examine the country’s most important issues through a Midwestern lens, and it featured a host great leaders, speakers, and journalists from the Midwest & beyond. A packed house gathered for a program that, I thought, was equal parts insightful and inspirational.

Of course there are already lots of excellent ideas festivals out there - many of them on the coasts, or in vacation spots like Aspen or Sun Valley. So why start one in Minnesota?

Well, we thought a Minnesota lens on the country’s future might add something substantial to the discussion. As I’ve shared in this newsletter often, our state punches above its weight in so many categories - quality of life, economic prosperity, arts & culture, and more. It’s also full of paradoxes and headlines that mirror the country’s deepest struggles - opportunity gaps in demography and geography, political polarization, gun violence and more.

Bringing a Minnesota sensibility to where America is headed, we thought, could add some optimism and pragmatism to the national discussion - and help the Strib play a deeper role in helping our community grow.

Our speakers didn’t disappoint. The Governors of Minnesota and Illinois dug into the tensions between States and Washington, and didn’t pull any punches. The Chief Economist of Open AI and the Chairman of the Minneapolis Fed grappled with how AI is changing our economy. Top CEOs in the Midwest talked about what it’s like to lead from the Midwest in this moment. And a host of insight talks brought fresh ideas in culture, science, housing, art, and economic growth that sparked conversations throughout the day.

Videos of the summit are here, and you can see a recap of it all over at the Strib.

I was really proud of our team for taking a big swing and trying something new. We’ve never done anything even remotely like this before! But the feedback we got from attendees was wonderful - people are clearly hungry for opportunities to come together, and for a dose of fresh ideas about where America goes from here.

I’d love to see you all at the next North Star Summit next year.

An unexpected part of leading a news organization

When I took on this job a few years ago, I did not think one of my roles would be to simply remind people why journalism and free speech matter. But these days, I find myself doing that more and more. The administration is suing media companies it disagrees with. The FCC is cracking down on free speech, even on late night talk shows. And journalists everywhere - including at the Strib - are being threatened simply for doing their jobs on behalf of us all.

In a recent column, I shared with our readers why we think this moment calls for local news organizations to provide dependable, stable reporting without fear - while also rapidly changing how we reach audiences in a furious and fragmented news cycle. It’s enough to make your head spin, but I’m really proud of our team to staying focused.

One move we made is to launch the first stand-alone investigative team at the Strib in over a decade. We had a major national scoop on the administration’s discussions about sending more than just the National Guard to Portland. We’ve gone deep on Minnesota’s gun laws to see where they work and where they don’t. The team used AI to decipher the cryptic videos of the shooter from the Annunciation School shooting. Doing this kind of work takes thick skin, and increasingly we’ve had to take extra security precautions in a volatile environment.

The good news is, polls show the public wants the press to be free and does not want the government attacking free speech. We’re using this moment to remind people that donating or subscribing to your favorite local news organization is a great way to make sure that doesn’t happen.

Notes from the book tour

The tour for “How I Found Myself in the Midwest” has continued this fall, with lots of fun talks and discussions in Minnesota. It’s been encouraging to find growing momentum for the idea of “going local” at this unique time in our country, and I’ve found that the more events I do, the more my own thinking sharpens on how we can reboot our most important institutions for the future.

It was fun to talk with the Niskanen Center on their podcast, “The Vital Center,” about these topics. At the “Talk of the Stacks,” we went deep on community and what it means to rebuild trust. I have some more stops this fall, and am looking forward to the Westminster Town Hall in particular on October 23, for their series on Ethics & Public policy - join me if you’re around!

Here’s a few more pics from the tour since I last wrote.

Thanks for reading and my best to you all,

Steve

While my optimism and love for the place we live is strong, the view from Minnesota this past week has brought many other emotions forward. Anger. Disbelief. Sadness. Fear. Resolve.

The school shooting at Annunciation School in Minneapolis, just two miles from our home, claimed the lives of two children the same age as our twins, and injured 18 other people. It has rocked our state once again this summer, just two months after the political assassinations of our former Speaker of the House Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark. Like everyone, everywhere, every time this happens, we’re all asking - how can this keep taking place? And why did it happen here?

Answers are hard to find, but the Strib’s newsroom has been digging into all facets of the story with a lot of thoughtfulness and courage. Our photographer Richard Tsong-Taatarii captured an unforgettable image the morning of the shooting — of a mother running barefoot towards the school once she heard the news. It has captured the hearts of Minnesotans and people everywhere. For all the thousands of words of reporting the team has done so far, this photo is perhaps the post powerful piece of journalism our newsroom produced in the last week.

These moments affect our team emotionally, too. One of our editors has a child who was at the Mass when the shooting happened. When she heard news of the shooting she bolted from the newsroom for the school; thankfully her kids were not physically harmed. She then returned to the newsroom to share more with her colleagues about what she’d learned.

“It sounds so cliché, but it’s your worst nightmare,” she said. “You live the worst of that nightmare until you see your child, but then it’s like you’re still trying to wake up.”

Crisis has a way of pulling people together, too. The community has come out to support a major fundraiser for families in need. Blue and green ribbons - the colors of Annunciation — are wrapped around trees everywhere. And political leaders are pushing for change - some for smarter gun restrictions, others for more mental health resources. Of course we need both. There are so many common sense things that must be done to stop the scourge of gun violence in our country.

Action is needed, but love is too. At our church on Sunday, our Pastor Lisa Wiens Heinsohn reminded us of the power that love has for all of us:

Love is the one thing that grows the more you give it away. It is contagious. It can’t be quantified or commodified. It operates by different laws, almost like quantum physics operate using different laws than the ones we know in ordinary reality…

The measure of our grief is the measure of our love… Today is the day for giving and receiving love, for remembering that love is never wasted, for remembering that goodness goes out and accomplishes the purposes of the heart of God even though we don’t always see the result.

Pride in place

Despite our challenges, a recent survey shows that Minnesotans are proud of our state. A YouGov poll last month showed we’re tied with Michigan for tops in the country with 79% of people here expressing state pride.

The nationwide poll is worth a look, and is a testament to the power of local. The more local you get, the more pride you find: 47% of respondents express pride in America; 58% for their state; and 64% for their city or town. More here.

Come visit, October 7

In a little over a month, we’re trying something very new at the Strib - a pilot for what we hope will become the biggest ideas festival in the Midwest. We’re calling it the North Star Summit, and it’s got a fantastic line-up of speakers (some on this mailing list!) in business, politics and beyond who will share thoughts on where the world is going through a Midwestern lens.

We’re drawing inspiration from the New York Times DealBook Summit, the Aspen Ideas Festival, and TribFest in Austin, to name a few. It’ll be held on Oct. 7 at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. We’ll have technology leaders from OpenAI and Google, political leaders from across the Midwest, and big thinkers who are excellent at helping us all peer more clearly into the future.

See our line-up here, and please consider grabbing a ticket to join us in Minnesota.

Book Updates

The launch of How I Found Myself in Midwest is going well - the tour this summer has been energizing and exciting. More tour stops ahead this fall, and some public speeches too. I’ve also enjoyed doing several private talks at companies and businesses, from Medtronic to Accenture to Medical Alley to the Vikings (later today!) and beyond. If you’re looking for a speaker or a conversation on the power of local or the future of our most important institutions - media, government, & technology - please don’t hesitate to reach out.

Hello from the fam

Luke and Violet started third grade last week and Mary and I couldn’t be prouder. We’re feeling luckier than usual to have two healthy kids off to school. They also started “Luke and Lottie’s Business” a few weeks ago together, and have been mowing lawns, watering plants, and making cookies and mac & cheese for neighbors to earn a little extra money. Taking after their mom’s entrepreneurial spirit already - here’s their commercial.

I hope all is well with you and yours - have a wonderful fall and please be in touch.

With love,

Steve

Your notes, calls, texts, posts, and attendance at my book talks have meant so much to me. No matter how far the story travels, I already feel enriched by this experience thanks to friends and family like you.

Highlights from the Road

With tour stops in Minneapolis, Northfield, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., St. Cloud, & Mankato, it’s been packed month. A few things have stuck out so far:

• The personal parts of the story seem to have resonated the most with people. When I set out to write this book, I hadn’t planned to write about making friends in your 40s, fertility struggles, or my faith journey - but those are some of the themes I’ve heard the most feedback on. It’s been an affirming reminder that being vulnerable and open is a powerful way to connect.

• People seem eager for messages of hope. For all that’s happening in the world, I wondered how a book whose tone is hopeful might resonate. But readers so far have leaned into the hopeful storylines of the power of "going local,” and lots of the questions and comments I’ve gotten on tour stops have been optimistic thoughts about how best to build community.

• A story rooted in place can have impact anywhere. My story may be about a specific place, but the energy I’ve discovered from people who aren’t living here has been just as strong. I wondered if the book would feel too regional for a national audience, but the feedback so far is that the themes you discover when you explore community in one place are applicable everywhere.

How’s the book doing?

Sales are good and growing as the book finds its audiences. It was fun to see it stay on top of the “New Releases in Cultural Anthropology” chart on Amazon for the whole first month.

We also made the Indie best-seller list for the Midwest.

Here are a few local and national media highlights so far:

Minnesota Public Radio, The Grill Room, Katie Couric, The Rebooting Show, New America, Versique, Fox 9 News, WCCO Radio, Conversations with Chanda, CMC Magazine, McKinsey, the Mall of America Podcast (with Mary!), and my hometown Northfield News.

A few ways you might help with momentum:

• Buy the book

• Tell your friends! Word of mouth is huge in publishing, so sharing the book personally, or by sharing it on social media, goes a long way.

• Leave a review on Amazon, they make a huge difference. My goal is to get to 50 reviews, and I’m currently at 37… getting closer.

More Public Tour Stops Ahead

Rochester, MN - Wednesday | August 20, 2025

• 12:00-1:00 PM CT

• Moderator: Patrick Seeb, Destination Medical Center

• RSVP here

Decorah, Iowa - Wednesday | August 20, 2025

• 7:00 - 8:15 PM CT

• Moderator: Seth Boyes, Editor, Decorah Leader

• More here

Duluth, MN — Tuesday | September 9, 2025

• 7:00-8:00 PM CT

• Ursa Minor Brewing, with Zenith Bookstore

• Moderator: Former Mayor Emily Larson

• RSVP here

Minneapolis — Wednesday, September 10 - “Talk of the Stacks”

• 7:00 pm

• Friends of the Hennepin County Library

• RSVP here

Minneapolis - Thursday, October 23 - Westminster Town Hall Forum

• 7:00 pm

• RSVP info coming soon

A View from Minnesota

Now it’s time for this newsletter to return to its usual form: a semi-regular update for people I care about on what’s happening in Minnesota, and with our family. Thank you for bearing with me these past several months on all things book promotion! Writing a book has been a life dream of mine and sharing the journey so far has been rewarding, even if at times I’ve felt a little self conscious about it all. I’m grateful for your support.

Thank you for your friendship,

Steve

If you haven’t had a chance to pick up the book yet, it’s not too late to contribute to all-important Week 1 sales by ordering one today. I’m grateful for your support!

Order here

Launch events

We had two lovely launch events with 250+ people in both Minneapolis and Northfield. At a somber time in our state, both gatherings felt rich with reflection and hope. Ali Kaplan of Twin Cities Business and Benya Kraus of the Southern Minnesota Initiative Foundation each did a wonderful job guiding our conversations. More tour stops ahead, which you can find here.

Debuting as #1 on Amazon in Cultural Anthropology

I’m no cultural anthropologist, but my book falls into that category (among others), and it’s been nice to see it top the list of new releases there on Amazon. The book is very much about place and culture, so I hope it continues to resonate with people both in the Midwest & beyond.

To keep the momentum up, I’d love your help: Amazon reviews make a huge difference. My goal is to get to 50, which is an important milestone in their algorithm, so dropping even a sentence or two with a star-ranking will help.

Leave your review here

Seeing the book out in the wild

It’s been fun to see the book on actual book shelves, and even more fun to receive the pictures you’ve sent me of the book - please keep them coming, it’s really encouraging to see. Even more so, the notes I’ve begun to get from people of what stuck out to you in the book is really meaningful. The parts of my personal story that included my spiritual journey, our fertility struggles, mental health challenges, and imposter syndrome seem to have struck a chord most often. Thank you so much for your personal notes and encouragement.

Thank you all for your friendship, encouragement, and support. And, thank you for allowing these newsletters to land in your inbox with more frequency than usual. Word of mouth is a powerful force in publishing, and these newsletters allow me to echo that with all of you, which will help the message of hope in this book travel farther.

With love,

Steve

Subscribe now

Today’s the day: “How I Found Myself in the Midwest: A Memoir of Reinvention” is out in the world. I’m excited to share it with you, and grateful for your support.

A lot has happened since I finished writing the book earlier this year. The tensions and tragedies that both Minnesota and country are grappling with can make hope harder to find. Yet despite (and perhaps because of) the challenges we face, I believe the message this book carries - about the power of building community - is even more relevant now than ever.

As New York Times bestselling author William Kent Krueger kindly shared,

“If you’ve lost hope in your state, in your nation, in your people, if you’ve become cynical about the future, this is a book that will restore your faith in the power of community.”

How you might help

The truth is, it’s hard to break through the frenetic news cycle and land a book. And so, if the message of this book resonates with you, there there 3 ways that I could use your help:

1. Make a social media post about the book, the more personal the better. You can link here for people find out more, and feel free to tag me on LinkedIn, Instagram, X/Twitter, Facebook, Bluesky, or Threads, so that I can amplify your post.

2. Amazon reviews matter a lot. Please consider giving my book a review; even just leaving a star rating makes a difference.

3. Word of Mouth is still the most powerful force in publishing. If you like the book, please tell your friends, family, or anyone else you think might find value in the story.

Where to buy

If you haven't purchased the book, I’d be thrilled if you did. Here are some options:

• Amazon

• Bookshop.org

• Barnes & Noble

• Target

• Books-a-Million

*New* Tour Stops

Since I last wrote, I’ve added several more tour stops including various Minnesota locations and a new stop in Washington, D.C. Here’s a full list of tour stops so far:

TONIGHT: June 24, Minneapolis, MN

• The Parkway Theater, with Magers & Quinn bookstore

• Special musical guest: Airlands

• Moderator: Allison Kaplan, Editor-in-Chief, Twin Cities Business Journal

• TICKETS HERE

June 25, Northfield, MN

• The Grand, with Content Bookstore

• Moderator: Benya Kraus, President, Southern Minnesota Initiative Foundation

• RSVP Here

July 1, 12:00pm - 1:00pm - Virtual Book Talk

• New America Foundation

• Moderator: Peter Bergen, Vice President, New America and Co-Director, Future Security

• RSVP here

July 9, San Francisco, CA

• Book Passage (the Ferry Building)

• Moderator: Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, Editor-in-Chief, San Francisco Chronicle

• RSVP Here

July 16, Washington D.C.

• Busboys & Poets, on 14th & V

• Moderator: Rachel Martin, National Public Radio

• RSVP here

July 23, 8-9:30am - St. Cloud, MN

• Great River Children’s Museum rooftop

• Moderator: NeTia Bauman, CEO and President, Greater St. Cloud Development Corporation, and Nick Tietz, Founder & CEO, ILT Academy

• Partners: Greater St. Cloud Development Corporation

• RSVP here

July 29, Noon - Mankato, MN

• Maverick Innovation Gateway – with Mankato State University Bookstore

• Partners: Greater Mankato Growth

• Moderator: Andy Wilke, Executive Vice President, Greater Mankato Growth

• RSVP here

August (TBD) - Rochester, MN

• Destination Medical Center, with Garden Party Books

• RSVP info coming soon!

September 9, 7:00pm - Duluth, Minnesota

• Ursa Minor Brewing, with Zenith Bookstore

• Moderator: Former Mayor Emily Larson

• RSVP here

Lastly, THANK YOU for all of your support. Since the moment I took on this project, I knew I was lucky to get to share a story that might do some good.

I hope you like it.

Yours,

Steve

In a state with a tendency towards feelings of exceptionalism, after decades of above-average outcomes and a history of bipartisanship, our sense of self has felt deeply challenged in the wake of political violence. This isn’t supposed to happen here.

Of course, it isn’t supposed to happen anywhere.

I counted myself lucky to get to work with Speaker Hortman when I was in state government. As a rookie government official, I was trying to navigate a polarizing pandemic that was fraught with challenge. Hortman deftly helped me build unemployment insurance extensions and small business grant programs with support from both parties in a divided legislature. She did it with calmness, a shrewd understanding of politics, and a deft negotiator’s touch. But it was her kindness toward me that gave me confidence in my role, a gift she gave to so many others, too.

Now at the Minnesota Star Tribune, I’ve gotten to witness her skill along with the rest of Minnesota.

Hortman’s exceptional gifts helped a House that was deadlocked 50-50 pass a state budget when she cast a difficult but necessary vote to make it happen, taking the political heat for her party to help our state move forward.

“Minnesotans expect us to come together and govern,” she said in a statement afterward. “A true compromise means no one gets everything they want.”

To be a Minnesotan has long meant to believe in bipartisanship. This is a state where people consistently split their ticket between Republicans and Democrats when they vote. It’s a place where divided legislatures haven’t stopped us from making major legislative progress. As many historians have noted, our politics has an almost “moralistic” tone to it - service is seen as a duty, as is rising above our differences.

Recent years have challenged that image. Hortman’s assassination is the second major crisis of the last five years that has put our state on national display in ways that force us to question our unity. But just as unity is not inevitable, its unravelling isn’t, either.

Maybe some well-meaning exceptionalism is just what we need. If we don’t believe we’re better than this, then we never will be. Perhaps, in the wake of another horrendous tragedy, the best thing we can do to bring unity to our state and our country is simply to believe it’s possible, and keep fighting for it.

Speaker Hortman’s children, Sophie and Colin, have already set an example in a statement they released just days after their parents were gone.

“Hope and resilience are the enemy of fear. Our parents lived their lives with immense dedication to their fellow humans. This tragedy must become a moment for us to come together. Hold your loved ones a little closer. Love your neighbors. Treat each other with kindness and respect. The best way to honor our parents' memory is to do something, whether big or small, to make our community just a little better for someone else."

A GoFundMe for Speaker Hortman's family can be found here: http://bit.ly/Donate-Hortman

And here's one for Senator Hoffman & his wife Yvette: http://bit.ly/Donate-Hoffmans

The Strib in Action

A central challenge in breaking news events today is that misinformation spreads fast. Intense searches for answers gives space for bad actors to try to mislead the public, and the dynamics of the Internet fracture our sources of truth. That’s why I’ve been so proud of our team at the Minnesota Star Tribune for the deeply comprehensive and timely journalism they’ve been producing over the past several days.

From the moment I got an early Saturday morning text from the newsroom alerting me to the breaking news, I saw our team spring into action across the state to cover the story. They made our report the most reliable place, locally or nationally, to get information about the crisis from every angle.

One of our reporters, Chris Vondracek, shared his experience covering the story over the weekend with Slate reporter Aymann Ismail. I found his comments on how newsrooms fight misinformation to be powerful:

Q: I remember early on there was a frenzy for finding out information about the shooter, assigning to them either a Democrat or Republican label. At one point, I read that the shooting was related to the “No Kings” rallies staged across the nation. It was pointed out that the shooter was appointed to a state board by Walz in 2019. How did all of that complicate your job?

A: What’s weird for me is that I don’t want to call it misinformation. Yes, the suspect was on a nonpartisan workforce industry 16-member board, first appointed by then–Gov. Mark Dayton. That’s accurate. But there was other stuff, too. Rep. Hortman, who was then minority leader, voted with Republicans and Walz to strip health care for undocumented people to get the budget bill passed. That was a big caucus-splitting vote for Rep. Hortman. A Republican I know messaged me what I had been seeing online, pointing to that vote as a potential left-wing activist motivation.

As a journalist, you don’t want to dismiss any idea outright, even if it seems far-fetched. But I’m grateful to have a whole team of reporters who are professionals that can point to the inconsistencies in those types of rumors. And as more information came out, like the names of many other progressives who were on the suspect’s list of targets, it became apparent that that rumored motivation was not right. There was maybe 90 minutes there where there was some fluidity on that front, where we tried to understand what this workforce board was that the suspect was on. But now, as we’ve seen, the dude was a big supporter of President Trump, listening to Infowars….

I covered Gov. Walz on his pheasant hunt last fall when he was a vice presidential candidate. I remember not getting any Wi-Fi in the field we were in as I and 20 other journalists followed him around. After leaving the field and getting Wi-Fi, I saw all this weird misinformation from across the world, all the way in England, alleging that Walz couldn’t take the shells out of a shotgun. In the three hours we were out there, for 10 seconds while he was talking to the press standing there, his gun jams a little bit. Is that misinformation? Or is it selective sharing of snippets of a broader whole that get weaponized by people online?

This moment has served as another reminder of what local news organizations like ours were built to do: bring truth to chaotic moments and help our state and the world understand what’s happening, and why it matters.

If crisis forces us to examine who we are, it also reminds us what we need: strong institutions like local news organizations that bring clarity to chaos and help communities get through their darkest times.

Subscribe now

A few weeks ago I sat down and read the final copy of How I Found Myself in the Midwest out loud, for my audio book. It was quite an experience - 30 hours of recording and a lot of coaching from a patient production technician over Zoom from New York. I’m no pro, but it gave me a whole new respect for all the voice actors I hear in the animated movies our kids watch.

Today (for readers of this newsletter only) I’m sharing Chapter 1 of the audio book. “From the Valley to the Prairie,” it shares the story of our decision to move to Minnesota, and sets up the rest of the book.

I’d love to hear what you think!

How I Found Myself in the Midwest, Chapter 1 on Soundcloud

Citizentube Returns

When I worked at YouTube, almost 20 years ago, I started a YouTube channel called “Citizentube” designed to grow the news and politics community on the brand new video site. It tracked all kind of early trends in YouTube news and politics (remember Obama Girl, or the CNN/YouTube Debates?).

Well, the channel hasn’t been active for a dozen years, but I decided to revive it... for one video.

Here’s the return of Citizentube:

CITIZENTUBE RETURNS!!! (for one video)

Greater Minnesota

Minnesotans call the rural parts of our state (outside the Twin Cities) “Greater Minnesota.” I grew up in Greater Minnesota, though when Mary and I moved here we settled in Minneapolis. One of the tensions I explore in my book is America’s urban and rural divides, and how Minnesota is navigating them.

For a long time, this state has uniquely connected our urban and rural counties through an expansive highway system, strong infrastructure programs, smart tax policies and local government aid, and some cultural anomalies: an urban population that regularly goes “Up North” to visit cabins in the summer, and a nationally-recognized Minnesota State Fair that brings the whole state together for a giant block party every August.

It’s led to a unique sense of statewide Minnesota identity and pride. People love saying they’re from here, and social scientists point to the state as an example of regional cohesion, similar to Texas and Maine.

Of course, the past 5 years have brought unprecedented tensions to the urban-rural divide in America, which I saw first hand when we moved back and I travelled around for my work in government, and now local news. It’s become common to point out how polarized we are, and there is some truth to that. But there are also plenty of pockets of hope when you go local.

My book profiles several “bridge-builders” who are challenging the idea that we’re inextricably divided - and doing something about it. For example:

• A Boomerang Minnesotan named Benya Kraus who started “Lead for America,” a program that places college graduates in rural towns across the country in public service internships.

• Dustin Goslin, an tribal economic development leader who helped build a childcare center in Onamia, MN that serves both tribal and white families in northern Minnesota.

• Mohayadin Mohamed, a Somali immigrant in St. Cloud who’s driving the development of a community center in a city that’s become a microcosm of American industry and demography.

I look forward to sharing their stories with you on June 24!

Special 10% discount on my book for subscribers

As a thank you to all loyal readers of this newsletter, I’m excited to offer a 10% discount on pre-orders for my book. Anyone who orders the book before June 24 can now get 10% off when they buy through our Strib Store, here:

“How I Found Myself in the Midwest”

Use the promo code GROVE10 to get the discount, and thank you!

Just for Fun

Last night, a box of hard cover books arrived in the mail just a few weeks early. It was a surreal moment holding the book in my hands, a moment I’d imagined for a long time. The kids and Mary had a fun time with it, too.

One of the defining characteristics of Silicon Valley is the confidence of the place. Being at the epicenter of the technology industry gives people a certain swagger that helps startups and companies take big risks. That comes with downsides, but it’s also a big reason why the region has become such a hotbed of innovation.

When we left the Valley and moved to Minnesota, and I joined state government, I was curious to learn more about my home state’s technology economy. What I found surprised me.

Minnesota was a top technology market for many years, at the center of the supercomputer boom in the mid 20th-century. The industry spawned many world-changing computer companies, and the term “surfing the Internet” was coined by Mark McCahill, the visionary founder of the Internet Gopher at the U of M, which once hosted more traffic that the world wide web. The video game Oregon Trail was even invented here (shoutout to my fifth grade computer lab buddies, we played all the time)!

Today, it’s the state’s Med Tech ecosystem that dominates, anchored by the Mayo Clinic in Rochester and a host of medical technology companies that comprise “Medical Alley.” It churns out the highest number of med tech patents per capita in the nation. At the heart of my home state’s technology community is a purpose-driven mentality to solve real problems that affect real people, in industries core to human health, food, and quality of life.

In my new book, How I Found Myself in the Midwest, I explore why this came to be. I also share what I think Minnesota can learn from Silicon Valley, and what Silicon Valley can learn from Minnesota. In creating government programs to spark innovation, and seeing Mary start Bread & Butter Ventures here, I learned a lot that I’m excited to share in the book.

Early Praise from Steve Case

One tech leader I’m grateful to have support from on my book is Steve Case, the founder of AOL and of Rise of the Rest, a seed fund that focuses on startups outside the coasts.

Special 10% discount on my book for subscribers

As a thank you to all loyal readers of this newsletter, I’m excited to offer a 10% discount on pre-orders for my book. Anyone who orders the book before June 24 can now get 10% off when they buy through the Strib Store, here:

https://stribstore.com/products/how-i-found-myself-in-the-midwest

Use the promo code GROVE10 to get the discount, and thank you!

Join me

We’ve adding tour dates in Greater Minnesota, Washington D.C., and Iowa (my birth state!) in the coming weeks so I’ll keep you posted on details. Here are the stops already on the books, I’d love to see you there!

June 24: Minneapolis, MN - LAUNCH DAY

• The Parkway Theater, with Magers & Quinn bookstore

• Special musical guest: Airlands

• Moderator: Allison Kaplan, Editor-in-Chief, Twin Cities Business Journal

• TICKETS HERE

June 25: Northfield, MN

• The Grand, with Content Bookstore

• Special musical guest: Craig Wasner

• Moderator: Benya Kraus, President, Southern Minnesota Initiative Foundation

• RSVP Here

July 9: San Francisco, CA

• Book Passage (the Ferry Building)

• Moderator: Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, Editor, San Francisco Chronicle

• RSVP Here

Thanks for reading, and for your support! Pre-orders make a HUGE difference, so thank you for spreading the word.

Yours,

Steve

One of the themes of “How I Found Myself in the Midwest” is building community. When I moved to Minnesota from California I was 40, I discovered that it took more work than I expected to make friends.

Why was that?

Was it having kids and a busy life? Was it that Minnesota social circles have a reputation of being harder to break into (“If you want to make a friend in Minnesota, go to kindergarten here!” is a common refrain.)? Or... was it that it just takes more work to build friendships in the modern world?

It was probably a combination of all three. If you follow Robert Putnam’s research (the famous “Bowling Alone” author has studied American community for decades), you know the trend lines. The average American spends 10 hours a day consuming media, and polarization has been rising steadily since the 1960s. A recent survey showed that only 50% of American are satisfied with how many friends they have.

When I moved here and began looking for new friends in my 40s, I earned a few insights that I write about in the book:

You’re not the only one. It’s easy to feel lonely when you’re new to a place, but the quicker you realize that everyone’s looking for something, the less lonely you feel. When I got over feeling like everyone else had their lives all neatly put together, it dropped the stigma I felt about searching for new friends.

Taking a risk usually pays off. Being proactive is important but scary - what if someone doesn’t want to hang out with me!? I’ve found more often than not, just taking a swing is worth it. The worst that can happen is that it doesn’t work out, which just leaves you right where you started anyway.

Going through something together matters. When I think about many of the good friends I’ve developed in my life, many of them come from high school, college, or other specific experiences I’ve gone through. Researchers say the average age we meet our best friends is 21 - an age when you’re going through a lot, alongside a lot of other people. In adulthood, looking for things to go through together with people can build bonds - whether that’s a sports league, a religious community, a gardening club, or even just parenting.

There are groups that can help. I was impressed to find a whole slew of Meetup groups in Minnesota designed exactly to help people meet one another. One I write about in the book is Break the Bubble, a robust local meetup group whose mission is to help people make friends. While I’d argue the Internet has changed our in-person social lives for the worse overall, this is one area where it shines - making it easier to connect and meet up with people like you in real life.

You don’t have to have just one “crew.” In high school and college I had a “crew” that I rolled with. In adulthood, it’s less common. When I stopped thinking I had to have just one group of friends that felt like home, it made finding new friends easier. Different friends groups from different parts of life are the norm, and just as enriching.

First Book Tour Stops!

I’m six weeks out from publishing “How I Found Myself in the Midwest,” and I have my first few tour dates to share:

June 24: Minneapolis, MN - LAUNCH DAY

• The Parkway Theater, with Magers & Quinn bookstore

• Special musical guest: Airlands

• Moderator: Allison Kaplan, Editor-in-Chief, Twin Cities Business Journal

• TICKETS HERE

June 25: Northfield, MN

• The Grand, with Content Bookstore

• Moderator: Benya Kraus, President, Southern Minnesota Initiative Foundation

• RSVP Here

July 9: San Francisco, CA

• Book Passage (the Ferry Building)

• RSVP Here

We’ll be adding other dates in the Midwest and the coasts soon, so please stay tuned!

New places to follow “A View from Minnesota”

I’m sharing more about my work, and about the journey of publishing my book, on a few social media accounts. I’d love a follow and a re-share if you can!

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stevegrovemn

• Tik-Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@stevegrovemn

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/grovesteve

Thanks for reading! And if you can please consider a pre-order of the book, early sales are a huge way to build momentum for a book!

Yours,

Steve