In 2014, Minnesota business magnate Glen Taylor finalized his purchase of the Star Tribune, which, at the time, held the seventh-largest Sunday circulation in the U.S. Hopeful commentators framed the move as an example of a civic-minded billionaire putting a treasured outlet on a path to sustainability and rescuing it from the clutches of rapacious venture capitalists.
While billionaire ownership has been a mixed blessing for some news outlets, this has so far been a happier story. Fast-forward 10 years from 2014 to the spring of 2024. With the Star Tribune’s new CEO and publisher Steve Grove in the role for just over a year, leadership sought to transform the outlet into what executive vice president and chief revenue officer Paul Kasbohm called “the leading model of local journalism in the country.” Stakeholders put in place a new strategic plan, website and content and digital strategies. Last summer, the paper relaunched as the Minnesota Star Tribune (or “Strib” for short) to emphasize its commitment to cover the entire state.
During their strategic planning exercise, leaders concluded they couldn’t advance the paper’s revised mission by relying entirely on advertising and subscription revenue. So last October, the paper added donations to its revenue model by launching the Minnesota Star Tribune Local News Fund, a nonprofit organization stewarded by its fiscal sponsor, the Minneapolis Foundation.
Since its launch, the fund has received support from Google, Microsoft, a Lenfest Institute/Open AI partnership, the Minneapolis-based George Family Foundation, local philanthropists and two of Glen Taylor’s foundations. “We are actively applying for grants and reaching out to partners in the foundation space locally and nationally,” Kasbohm said.
Developments in Minnesota come at a time when philanthropy is reshaping the U.S. news ecosystem. Nonprofit outlets are successfully expanding their donor bases beyond the usual foundation suspects, and for-profit outlets like the Salt Lake Tribune, the Portland Press Herald and the Spokesman-Review have converted to nonprofit status. By tapping donations while retaining its private ownership, the Strib’s hybrid approach resembles that of outlets like the Seattle Times, which has launched nonprofit initiatives in partnership with its fiscal sponsor, the Seattle Foundation.
“Across the industry,” Kasbohm said, “philanthropy is becoming an essential component of sustaining quality journalism, and we see it as a vital investment in the future of local news.”
Background on the Strib’s owner, Glen Taylor
Born in 1941, Taylor worked for a wedding service business in college before purchasing it and turning it into the print and communications company Taylor Corp., which is one of the largest privately held companies in the U.S. Taylor still serves as its chairman. He also served in the Minnesota Senate as a Republican from 1981 to 1990.
With a Forbes real-time net worth estimated at $2.9 billion, Taylor is perhaps best known as the owner of the NBA’s Minnesota Timberwolves and the WNBA’s Minnesota Lynx.
In April, Taylor agreed to sell both teams to e-commerce billionaire Mark Lore and former baseball player Alex Rodriguez for $1.5 billion. Assuming the sale goes through, some of the windfall will probably find its way to Taylor’s Glen A. Taylor Foundation and Taylor Family Farms Foundation, which he launched as part of what a 2023 Taylor Corp. press release called a “new charitable legacy plan.”
In the first phase of the plan, Taylor gifted parcels of farmland in Minnesota and Iowa valued at $172 million to the Taylor Family Farms Foundation. Income generated by the farmland will be distributed to the three nonprofit organizations — Mankato Area Foundation, Southern Minnesota Initiative Foundation and Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation.
A look at the Glen A. Taylor Foundation’s Form 990 for the fiscal year ending December 2023 reveals grantees including the Children’s Museum of Southern Minnesota, Mankato Youth Place, various local schools and institutions like the YMCA and Salvation Army. The Glen A. Taylor Foundation and Taylor Family Farms Foundation each contributed a $500,000 match for the Strib’s Local News Fund’s individual giving campaign.
How the Minnesota Star Tribune Local News Fund is making its pitch to readers
The Strib’s Local News Fund has been tackling challenges that will sound very familiar to other journalism start-ups.
“There is a public perception that news is or should be free,” Kasbohm said. “Unlike in sectors such as healthcare or education, there is still work to be done in educating donors on why journalism needs and deserves philanthropic support. A free press comes with very real costs, and quality journalism is a public need that requires support.”
At the same time, the Local News Fund is different from your typical community-based outlet since, as Kasbohm noted, the Strib “is a for-profit organization owned by a billionaire. It is fair to ask us why we are fundraising.”
CEO and Publisher Steve Grove directly addressed these issues in a pitch to readers when the fund launched last October. “This may sound funny to some ears,” he wrote. “Isn’t my subscription enough? Aren’t you independently owned by a businessman who can bankroll the company forever? Isn’t the Strib always going to be here no matter what, like Minnesota winters or pork chops on a stick? Those are all fair questions, and the answer to each of them is ‘no.’”
Grove went on to write that thanks to the internet, Minnesota lost 35% of its newspapers and more than 65% of journalists over the previous decade. “Today, a growing number of news outlets have turned to philanthropy as an important source of funding,” he wrote, citing the Associated Press and the Seattle Times. “Even the New York Times takes in donations.”
Grove also addressed the Strib’s billionaire owner. Glen Taylor “has never taken a penny of profit from the company since he bought it in 2014,” he wrote, “and he never will.”
“Simply put, Glen [and his wife Becky] have given us a chance,” Kasbohm said. “As any organization knows, you can’t depend on a single donor or partners to sustain your work, so we are asking others to join them.”
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The Local News Fund’s journalism to-do list
The Local News Fund is prioritizing three areas of journalism as it seeks additional philanthropic support. “We want to deepen our capacity for investigative journalism, as well as our environmental coverage, and we want to fund the launch of a journalism initiative we are calling ‘Bridging Divides,’ to tell important stories that help bring our communities together in divisive times,” Kasbohm said.
Kasbohm and his team are also seeking funding to support the Strib’s AI research lab with the goal of supporting journalism for every publisher in the state. “The efforts have been well received,” he said. “We are in the seven-figure range at this point with funding coming from a mix of individual donors, foundations and corporate supporters who believe in the value of strong local journalism.”
As part of its efforts to support journalism throughout Minnesota, last October, the Strib launched a statewide news partnership enabling content sharing between newsrooms and subscription bundling to provide participating outlets with new revenue streams. The program’s technology is being built with funding from a Google grant.
Kasbohm cited a few strategies that have helped the Local News Fund attract support from new donors, including tailoring its outreach to different donor segments, emphasizing the impact of donors’ contributions on investigative reporting, community engagement and public service journalism. The fund also rolled out a “Founding Donor” campaign targeting and ultimately recognizing individuals whose support helped to launch and sustain the fund.
Takeaways on journalism philanthropy from the story of the Strib
The Strib’s evolution and the launch of its Local News Fund speak to two themes that have emerged from my conversations with news leaders since last fall’s election.
The first is that the goal of saving local news shouldn’t fall squarely on the shoulders of nonprofit outlets — and should embrace what communities want rather than following some set, predefined model. “Communities want their news in different ways,” said Dale Anglin, the director of Press Forward, a national coalition that launched in September 2023 with a $500 million commitment to strengthen local news. “I always tell people I’m for for-profit, nonprofit, print, WhatsApp, or however else people want local news. If someone can deliver the news in that way, we should do it.”
The other big takeaway is that when philanthropy is part of the mix, it’s incumbent on outlets to convince funders who have never given to journalism that supporting local news can advance their priority interests. If outlets succeed, the pool of philanthropic dollars available for journalism should expand.
The Strib’s Local News Fund model speaks to both of these dynamics. It’s a privately owned outlet using philanthropy to strengthen Minnesota’s news ecosystem, and its leaders are betting that its value proposition will resonate with a diverse range of civic-minded funders, including those who have never given to a news outlet.
“Journalism is the lifeblood of a community,” Kasbohm said. “It connects us and gives us the information we need to navigate our daily lives. Communities with quality journalism see higher voter turnout, less polarization, more charitable giving and deeper community connection. The financial model for local news is broken; we need more sources of revenue, and philanthropy can be a big part of that.”
