Every Minnesotan deserves to know what’s happening in their backyard

Think about the last time local news mattered to you. Maybe you’re a parent who found out about a school board action. Maybe you own a small business, and a local story brought customers through your door. Maybe you found out about show times for a high school musical or learned about a new city ordinance. Maybe you needed to know where to find shelter after the Bemidji storm or wanted to understand what Operation Metro Surge meant for your community. In each case, someone had to be on the ground to learn about and report the story to connect you to decisions being made about your community.

Every Minnesotan deserves to know what’s happening in their backyard, and that requires people to do the work. This isn’t dissimilar from the people who design, build and maintain physical infrastructure like roads and bridges, or those who respond to emergencies or educate our children. Local news is a community asset that creates informed citizens, not just another consumer product. It’s a public good that connects people to decisions that shape their lives.

We’ve always invested in sanitary sewers and libraries. But investing in how we stay informed about those decisions? That investment is overdue and we aim to call attention to it.

That’s why we are gathering and hosting a “news rally” at the State Capitol on the morning of April 7 to make the case for investing in local news. Local news is essential. It builds communities and is a critical key to sustaining the civic structures and enduring sense of familiarity that bind us together as neighbors. We hope that you will join us in this effort.

The cost of waiting to invest is already showing. According to the University of Minnesota’s Journalism Center Ecosystem Mapping Project, 97 local news outlets across the state have closed since 2018 — around a dozen per year. For every two outlets that shut down, only one new one has launched. Among the closures are papers that served their communities for over a century. When newsrooms go dark, no one covers the city council meeting. Nobody examines why the budget changed. Nobody asks hard questions of elected officials. And nobody reports crucial information in the languages their community speaks. Research consistently shows that when local news disappears, civic participation drops, government spending rises, and corruption goes unchecked.

Yet local news today looks very different from a generation ago, or even 10 years ago. And it will look different a generation from now. The formats will keep changing, but the underlying need will not. Citizens require reliable information to vote, serve on juries, show up at school board meetings and understand what a divided state legislature means for their state. That demand is permanent, even as the business models that once sustained it have fractured.

To meet the moment, the True North News Alliance formed in 2026 to push forward sensible policy solutions to strengthen local news for Minnesota communities. True North is a statewide, grassroots effort built on the belief that every community deserves reliable local information. We are community leaders, journalists, parents and citizens who rely on local news. From TV stations in greater Minnesota, to multilingual media in central Minnesota, to digital startups in Twin Cities neighborhoods, we are working to rebuild trust, credibility and civic culture by investing in local news.

We are advancing a proven, practical policy tool: a payroll tax credit for local newsrooms. Illinois and New Mexico have already passed versions of this legislation, and it is working. It keeps reporters employed. It keeps newsrooms viable. It is an investment in community infrastructure — no different from the way we invest in roads, bridges, education or broadband. We are calling on Minnesota legislators to introduce and pass a local news revenue measure modeled on what those states have done. Minnesota should be next.

The tax credit alone will not solve everything. A healthy local news ecosystem requires multiple solutions: workforce pipelines that train the next generation of journalists, media grants and philanthropic investment, individual giving from readers who value what local reporters do, and advertising dollars from businesses that understand the connection between the press and a vibrant community.

We invite you to join us at 9 a.m. Tuesday at the Minnesota State Capitol rotunda to learn more about this effort from speakers, engaged community partners and journalists from across Minnesota’s news landscape. Every Minnesotan deserves reliable, local news, no matter where they live. To learn more about our mission and steering committee please visit us at: truenorthnews.info.