Reinventing the Minnesota Star Tribune

One of the hardest challenges in publishing is making local news models work. I was excited to speak to Steve Grove, CEO of the Minnesota Star Tribune, about how he's approaching the challenge. One thing that stood out that applies to all publishers: They need to focus on being a larger brand, or in the case of the Strib a civic institution. That means thinking beyond the typical newspaper report and business lines. First up, a message from Arc.

Reinventing news with AI: Inside Arc XP's Vision

The world is changing—and so must media. On July 17 at 12PM ET, join Joey Marburger and Joe Croney from Arc XP for a behind-the-scenes look at their bold new AI vision, built for the realities of modern journalism. From native vector search to agentic workflows, see how Arc XP is empowering media companies to break free from Big Tech, personalize at scale, and lead through disruption.

This isn’t a sales pitch—it’s a call to action for leaders ready to evolve with purpose and courage.

Going local

Steve Grove has an unusual background for the CEO of a regional newspaper. He’s spent more time in Big Tech than he has in newspapers. After a detour into state government, in April 2023, Grove was named the CEO of what was then called the Minneapolis Star Tribune. 

Grove spent a decade in California, where he worked at YouTube and Google in roles that put him at the center of Big Tech’s rise in media and politics. In 2007, he helped organize the first presidential debates on YouTube, launched Google’s News Lab to support digital journalism, and led civic partnerships across Google’s platforms during an era when connecting the world felt like an unambiguous good.

This was a different time. It was when broadly tech companies like Google were seen as progressive forces. The period between the rise of Obama – he still follows me on X – and the Tahrir Square protests in Egypt in 2011 were the height of digital exuberance. The feel-good vibes began to fade, and Grove looks back on his time in tech with mixed emotions.

“Tech companies in California were building things that changed the world,” Grove writes in his recently released book, “How I Found Myself in the Midwest.” “But it felt like sometimes we weren’t connected to it.”

He saw how the second-order effects of centralized platforms — disinformation, institutional erosion, extreme wealth concentration — changed the civic landscape. At Google, the impact was global but abstract. You made decisions, but you didn’t always see the outcomes up close. Grove eventually walked away and went into government. In 2019, he joined Governor Tim Walz’s cabinet as commissioner of employment and economic development. Then in 2023, he took on the Star Tribune, where he’s been engaged in the hard work of reinventing a local newspaper as a sustainable regional civic institution that threads the needle between continuing the critical accountability work while experimenting with new approaches to the business.

“When you're working at scale, like Google or YouTube, you do one thing and it affects a lot of people at once,” he told me on The Rebooting Show. “But when you start local, you build for a specific audience in ways that are useful fundamentally to that audience.”

Earlier this year, he hired Kathleen Hennessey, a former New York Times politics editor and White House reporter, as the paper’s top editor. He renamed the paper to encompass all of Minnesota rather than its historic focus on the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Duluth. He’s also embraced the local slang of Strib for the paper. The Star Tribune overhauled its brand, website and app. He launched a marketing campaign at the Minnesota State Fair to signal ambition.

“Revitalizing our whole look and feel and name and iconography isn’t the solution, but it was the first step to say, we’re here,” Steve told me. “Pay attention to us. We’re expanding. We have ambitions. And the brand that you trust, we hope, gives us permission to do some other things.”

He narrowed its editorial focus but also chose key areas for expansion. Coverage is now built around five core areas: politics and power, the economy, education, climate and the outdoors, and equity. Outdoors might seem like a soft beat, but in Minnesota it’s a core part of how people live. Local news can’t just be about corrupt city councilpersons and political fights.

“When you look at the things Minnesotans care about, the outdoors are right up there,” Grove said. “It’s one of the places we have permission to lead.”

I find Steve an interesting figure. He presents as someone who is fluent in politics. His years in government (and at Google) has probably instilled that. The Star Tribune has a billionaire owner in Glen Taylor, but it is also a business, and for everyone in the news business that means resetting costs. The Star Tribune recently offered buyouts to 100. He’s scrapped areas like personal finance and TV and book reviews. It’s a familiar story in news, although Grove points with pride at being “the largest newsroom in the Upper Midwest.” The company has also added staffers with 16% hired in the past year. Some of the cuts happening in the media business are a reallocation of resources.

“The Strib has been profitable since Glen [Taylor] owned it, but largely in a mode of managed decline, and managed decline is not a pathway towards long-term profitability and growth,” Steve said. “So that’s the need for a pretty big shift.”

Grove has leaned into subscriptions and added enterprise options for local businesses and institutions. He’s made product a priority, hiring Aaron Pilhofer as the publication’s first chief product officer in 2023 until he departed earlier this year. It has replatformed on Arc and brought in Piano to power subscriptions. He’s dabbled in reader donations and philanthropy. He’s expanded high school sports coverage with Strib Varsity, a new product focused entirely on high school sports, and is using AI to automate stats and game summaries across the state. The paper’s Top Workplaces program surveys local employees and culminates in a branded event celebrating top employers across Minnesota. He’s expanded events. 

“We're really pushing a model here of the platform of relevance over a paper of record,” Grove said. “You can’t just try to be everything to everyone anymore.”

Listen to the full conversation with Steve. 

One note: We recorded this conversation prior to the recent political violence, so it isn’t covered in our discussion.

Thanks for reading The Rebooting – and to Arc for its support. Be sure to check out its upcoming webinar.

For more information about partnerships with The Rebooting, see details about how we work with clients to reach influential executives in media and marketing. Send me an email with feedback, etc to bmorrissey@therebooting.com or by hitting reply to this message.