Save The Strib

With the Star Tribune in bankruptcy, Minnesota’s largest news source is in danger of going dark.

We, the journalists who write, photograph, edit and present the news every day, are launching this campaign because we believe the Star Tribune is an essential community resource that is too valuable to lose. Employees from many areas of the company have joined our effort.

Our best chance of continuing to provide the breadth and quality of news, opinion, sports and entertainment coverage Minnesotans deserve is to attract a new owner who shares our values and who is ready to lead the Star Tribune into a new age.

Newspapers across the country are hurting and disappearing as traditional advertising sources move to the Web. Highly leveraged ownership deals and investor pressures for higher profit margins have crippled newspapers’ financial strength and drastically thinned our staff.

Since New York-based private equity group Avista Capital Partners bought the Star Tribune in 2007, expenses have been cut by $50 million through reduced news pages, attrition, layoffs and voluntary buyouts. More than 650 jobs have been jettisoned. The newsroom staff of about 300 has seen its ranks cut by a third.

Yet, we continue to win local and national journalism awards. The latest figures rank the Star Tribune as the 15th largest newspaper in the country by circulation (334,000), and the 10th largest on Sunday (552,000). The newspaper’s website, www.startribune.com , averages nearly 90 million page views a month, among the top 10 in the nation.

As journalists, we consider our jobs a civic duty. We want to continue to shine a light in dark places, to tell you where your tax dollars are going, and to help you follow your hometown sports teams and understand how our natural places are being managed. We want to share stories of interesting people, to highlight great restaurants and fun recipes and to help you explore the world of art, theater and travel.

We’ve launched this web site to enlist your help in convincing a potential owner that the community values our work, even though you may not always agree with us. Testimonials from such as community leaders as mayors R.T. Rybak of Minneapolis and Chris Coleman of St. Paul, hockey legend Lou Nanne, Penumbra Theatre’s Lou Bellamy and Irish pub owner Kieran Folliard, and are just a start.

We need your help.

Please, sign our online petition. Send us your ideas about new business models. If you’re interested in forming an ownership group, check out our “Own the Strib” section of this site.

If you don’t subscribe, please do. We’ve provided a link to make it easier. Read us online. See all the ways Star Tribune journalists are breaking news and telling stories in video, audio and still photographs.
Help us convince a potential owner that great cities need robust news operations.

Save The Strib. It’s about our community.