MinnPost

What you're reading

MinnPost is a nonprofit digital newsroom based in Minneapolis, founded in 2007 by former Star Tribune editors and investors who anticipated the contraction of legacy daily papers. It is one of the older digital-nonprofit newsrooms in the country and pre-dates the wave of State Newsroom and ProPublica-affiliated local nonprofits by nearly a decade. Coverage centers on the Twin Cities — Minneapolis and St. Paul city government, Hennepin and Ramsey county affairs, the Met Council and transit, housing and homelessness, education, public health — plus Minnesota state government, the Legislature, and the political and policy fights affecting the state.

The publication is digital-only and free at the point of read, supported by member donations, foundation grants, and sponsorships. The newsroom is small — under two dozen staff — with regular contributors filling out the desk roster. MinnPost is particularly known for its weekly columnists and explainers (Eric Black on politics, the long-running glean and morning roundup formats), and for accountability reporting on state and local government. Audience skews older, more civically engaged, and policy-interested than a general-market Twin Cities paper.

Ownership & funding

MinnPost (nonprofit). Funded primarily through nonprofit + memberships.

Nonprofit-plus-membership funding removes pageview and ad-impression pressure. MinnPost runs no paywall and no programmatic advertising, which means coverage can prioritize policy depth over what virally clicks. The trade-off is donor and foundation dependence, which concentrates funder influence and tends to align coverage with the priorities of Twin Cities philanthropy — civic-process reporting, education, public health, transit, equity. The membership model also rewards loyal-reader stickiness, which pushes the publication toward sustained-attention pieces (columns, explainers, beat reporting) over breaking-news velocity. There is no commercial-incentive pressure on coverage; there is a foundation-and-member-priority pressure.

Where they land on the spectrum

nwsly's editorial team places MinnPost at Center with a factuality rating of High.

The Center rating reflects MinnPost's reporting discipline on contested Twin Cities and Minnesota stories. Coverage of the Minneapolis City Council, the Frey administration, and the post-Floyd MPD reform fights has been documented and quoted opposing perspectives at length. Statehouse reporting from the Capitol stays close to bill text, budget documents, and floor procedure, and treats Republican legislators in the minority as legitimate sources on procedural fights. Coverage of the Feeding Our Future fraud, of the MNLARS IT failure under the previous Dayton administration, and of Walz-administration agency decisions has been adverse to DFL incumbents when documents warranted it.

Where the pattern bends is on the social-issue beats common to Twin Cities civic media — police reform, housing-and-homelessness, immigration and the East African community, climate, public-school funding — where sourcing leans toward service providers, advocates, and affected communities more than toward enforcement officials or restrictionist policy voices. That sourcing is defensible and reflects the donor and member priorities, and it is part of why the page-level ideology reads as liberal despite the Center bias chip. The High factuality rating reflects MinnPost's long-standing discipline: corrections are flagged, sourcing is named, document trails are linked, and the publication does not chase anonymous-source political scoops. Reporting is methodical rather than viral.

Editorial vs news side

MinnPost has a clearly labeled split between reporting and opinion. The news desk files documented straight stories. The Community Voices section publishes opinion pieces from outside contributors across the political spectrum, identified as opinion. Regular columnists like Eric Black are bylined and labeled. The publication does not have a single editorial-board voice that issues endorsements; opinion is plural and clearly attributed. The Center bias rating applies to the reporting side. nwsly cites the reporting, not the Community Voices contributions, and the on-site labeling makes the split easy for readers to follow.

Why we include them in nwsly

Minnesota nonprofit newsroom; statehouse and Twin Cities civic coverage.

MinnPost has been filing Twin Cities and Minnesota civic coverage for nearly two decades, with institutional memory the Reformer (its younger statehouse-focused sibling) and most other Minnesota digital outlets cannot match. nwsly pairs MinnPost with Minnesota Reformer in our state lineup because they cover different beats — MinnPost is deeper on Minneapolis-St. Paul civic and policy stories, the Reformer is deeper on Capitol process — and both file with named sourcing and document trails. MinnPost's columnist and explainer formats also give us narrative context the wire-service feeds don't carry.

Recent nwsly briefs citing MinnPost

Coming soon — feed from /today and /catalog will populate this section.