State of Local

How can a local news organization make a big pile of money online? With MinnPost, Joel Kramer offers an interesting answer: don’t even try.

MinnPost, a Minnesota-oriented news site that launched Nov. 8, is a nonprofit operation. Promising a “thoughtful approach to news,” MinnPost aims to serve the public good with quality stories and commentary readers won’t get anywhere else.

The idea is to do good journalism without facing profit pressure from Wall Street or anyone else. You won’t see celebrity slideshows, viral videos or other sure-fire “clickers” here (unless you count goofball contributor Al Sicherman’s poetry contest).

Kramer, former publisher of the Minneapolis-based Star Tribune, assembed a nest egg of $850,000 from four philanthropic families, including his own, to get the site off the ground. MinnPost also boasts a growing stable of individual donors.

MinnPost’s lineup of contributors also sets it apart from most digital news startups. Kramer is not relying on user contributions or citizen journalists. Instead, most of MinnPost’s contributors are veteran journalists, many of them reporters who recently took buyouts from the downsizing Star Tribune and St. Paul Pioneer Press. MinnPost employs several editors, but pays writers by the piece.

Kramer took pains during the launch not to criticize bloggers and hobby writers. But he got some flak for MinnPost’s holier-than-thou “thoughtful approach” motto and the insistence that its short-form posts are not blog entries. The mocking began right away with MinnToast, which serves up a “thoughtfully buttered approach to news.”

Nearly a month into MinnPost, Kramer took some time this week to assess the venture.

How have the first few weeks gone? Has anything surprised you? Any unforeseen challenges or problems arise?

First few weeks have been great. Biggest surprise is how many people are reading the site on the weekend – more than 8,000 page views almost every weekend day, even though we’re not publishing new content on the weekend. I guess busy people are using the weekend to catch up on all the stories we published during the week. Another pleasant surprise is the energy of our free-lance writers. They’re steadily producing a lot of very good work for MinnPost.

I’m also a bit surprised (though perhaps I shouldn’t be) at the virtual news blackout in the major media since MinnPost launched. There was a story on MinnesotaPublicRadio.org on launch day, and though it never aired on the radio, it was the most emailed story of the week on their website. The feedback we’re getting from readers is mostly very positive, but a big challenge is spreading the word to more people. Another challenge we have is maintaining the high quality standard I feel we’re setting – and reaching even higher in some areas– without burning out our seven editors.

Can you point to any stories, posts or community voice submissions that you think highlight the strengths of MinnPost?

We’ve scooped other media on a number of stories, including the DFL Party’s financial problems, Governor Pawlenty’s plan for an environmental pact with governors in the region, the proposed plant in Duluth to create fuel from wood and ship it to Europe, and even Jesse Ventura’s new book and the math professors who hit it big on YouTube.

I’m proud of a number of our analytical stories and posts, including, for example, on the state deficit, the problems with Minneapolis skyways, the Vikings’ hopes for a football stadium, the relationship between Mayor Rybak and Governor Pawlenty, the crisis in the Minneapolis School District, and the technology challenges facing area colleges. We’ve also filled a gap with some very good arts coverage on subjects the dailies are paying less attention to, like classical music.

Can you characterize how the traffic has been? Above expectations? Below? Right on?

Traffic has exceed expectations. Before we launched, we told foundations and prospective advertisers that we were expecting (hoping) to get 400,000 page views the first full month. We haven’t published a full month yet, but we’re stable at a level of traffic that is equal to about 480,000 page views a month – 20% ahead of projections. We’re getting about 6,000 visits each weekday.

In addition, we estimate that 4,000 to 5,000 people a day are reading MinnPost in Print. Of course, we want to reach many more people. This is just a start, but it’s a start that makes me confident we’ll be able to provide a multi-year test of the premise that the community will support high-quality journalism in this new format.

What about number of registered users? Can you share a number, or an order of magnitude?

We don’t require registration to use the site. But we now have about 2,400 people registered to receive a daily email update from us, an increase of more than 50% from launch day, Nov. 8. This is a very healthy sign.

Did the launch create a spike in donors?

We had 335 donors when we launched, and in the three weeks since, we have added more than 175, so we are now passed 510 donors. This is more than double our initial projection, which called for 250 donors for all of 2007.