Southwest News Media General Manager Laurie Hartmann, whose name stood on the top of newspaper mastheads for decades in the south metro, saw a need in the city of Savage.
The community had no newspaper. There was no one to hold officials accountable, no one to publish the good, the bad and the happenings of the community.
In 1994 the Savage Pacer opened, joining a group of newspapers in the southwestern metro that included the Chanhassen Villager, established in 1987; Prior Lake American, 1960; Jordan Independent, 1885; Shakopee Valley News, 1862; and the Chaska Herald, established in 1862.
On April 27 those six papers, now under the umbrella of Southwest News Media, will cease publication due to consistent drops in advertising revenue amid a continued shift from print production to digital platforms. Crow River Media, which operates sister papers in Hutchinson and Litchfield, will also end production altogether.
The closings come four years since Denver-based MediaNews Group, a subsidiary of the New York City-based investment firm Alden Global Capital, acquired both Southwest News Media and Crow River Media.
For the first time in decades, and in some cases more than a century, residents will no longer have independent journalism investigating, informing and highlighting their communities.
Ink before the end of slavery
Since before the end of slavery and before women had the right to vote, the Chaska community has had a local newspaper.
First called the Valley Herald, the newspaper later relocated and was renamed the Chaska Herald. The Herald building, still operating today at 123 W. Second St., was built in 1871.
Printed in German during parts of the 1870s and littered with local and national ads ranging from Cooper’s grocery store to Ford Motors, the Herald reported on and reflected the community for countless decades.
In that time, local newspapers were the primary source of information. Details of obituaries, births and marriages down to the color of the groom’s shoes and the cost of wedding gifts were not uncommon. Classified ads were a staple of the news ranging from finding stray cattle, advertising the ability to sew dresses and even ads from men asking their wives to come home.
A column called “News about Town” reported on the comings and goings of townsfolk with great detail.
From the April 25, 1935 edition of the Chaska Herald: “Miss Agnes Splettstoesser of Le Sueur, was a guest of Parents Mr. and Mrs. Alex Splettstoesser, her sister, Miss Dolores and her brother, James from Saturday to Easter Monday.”
Even into the 1980s, putting together a newspaper required teams of employees that involved everything from typesetting to moving stories to floppy disks and physically driving them to the printing plant. It also involved the use of chemical darkrooms for processing each and every picture.
“Nothing was automated and I mean nothing,” Hartmann said.
New papers emerge
Savage Mayor Janet Williams, a lifelong resident in the community, remembers the days without a community newspaper.
“We never really had a paper in Savage until 1959 or so,” she said.
Before that, the community relied on the Shakopee paper and the Dakota County paper to get its news.
In 1959 the Minnesota Valley Review was formed, lasting until 1968. Then in 1984 the city hired someone to write and publish stories in the community until the Savage Pacer opened.
“It was a product in demand,” said Mark Weber, former General Manager at Southwest News Media. New members of the growing community had a strong appetite to learn about their new home, Weber said, and the best way to do that was to read and support the local paper.
“It’s a sad day,” Williams said about the loss of the paper.
The Herald and several other local papers were bought in 1982 by Red Wing Publishing, which owned more than 20 papers stretching from Red Wing to the southwest metro. Under Red Wing Publishing, the Chanhassen Villager and later the Savage Pacer were created in order to better cover the southwest metro.
A key part of the appeal of those new newspapers was that “there were things we used to provide that they couldn’t get in other places,” said Hartmann, referencing printed school lunch menus, city and school meeting coverage, or the letters from residents included on the opinion pages.
“We were welcomed with open arms,” to the new communities, Hartmann said.
Changing ecosystem
In the mid-1990s, Hartmann remembers asking then-publisher Stan Rolfsrud about providing employees with access to the internet. A belief shared by many in the industry, Rolfsrud responded: “don’t bother, it may not be around long.”
Since then, giants Google and Amazon — along with social media companies — have radically altered the way news is consumed and therefore how it is produced. The digital age fragmented where people get their news beyond the staples of radio, television and newspapers that once dominated the news ecosystem.
Not only are fewer people paying for and reading newspapers due to online competition, what they find in them isn’t always palatable to modern audiences.
According to Hartmann, simply covering both sides of an issue can now incite strong reactions of bias. “Our audience is harder to please as a whole,” Hartmann said.
The reshaping of advertising specifically has upended much of the traditional business model of newspapers.
“We had a tremendous amount of local advertisers simply because we were it,” Hartmann said.
In addition to the local advertisers, national and international companies would create print ads that could be used and localized for small businesses and inserted into newspapers. That practice has largely stopped.
“With the birth of the internet, there was this perception that news should be free [...] and free is not much of a business model,” Weber added.
What now?
The lack of newspapers across the south metro has been made clearer since the April 4 closure announcement.
Municipalities, counties and school districts are legally required to publish different notices in printed legal newspapers with certain regulations in place.
For decades the answer was simple: turn to the newspaper in the community.
But now, it’s left public bodies unsure of where to turn.
The city of Savage, for example, will run notices in the Star Tribune at a rate more than double what it was paying the Savage Pacer for ads, and with significantly less circulation within the community.
At the April 15 Chaska City Council meeting, the council adopted the Waconia Patriot as the city’s official newspaper, despite the fact that by their own estimate only about 50 residents in Chaska are subscribers.
“Who is going to look for something in Chaska in Waconia’s newspaper?” asked Mayor Mark Windschitl at the meeting.
The closure has also prompted some state lawmakers to back a measure in the Senate Education Policy Omnibus bill (SF 3567) that would eliminate the required publication of school district proceedings in newspapers and their websites. If passed, every school district in the state could move public notices from newspapers to their own websites, according to a statement from the Minnesota Newspapers Association.
Then there’s the local issues that will go without appropriate coverage, namely the upcoming elections this year.
Jordan Mayor Mike Franklin, who was first elected to the City Council in 2014, remembered when the Jordan Independent had a dedicated editor to cover the newspaper.
“They had a local editor and every city council meeting there would be three or four stories,” he recalled.
Even as the newsroom shrunk over the years, Franklin said there was always someone to turn to when there was a story.
“When there was a big story you could pretty much count on it being covered [...] and we knew who to reach out to,” Franklin said. “That’s going to leave a big void for sure.”
For some local leaders, the loss of newspapers means a loss of a trusted news source, a place where people can turn to for needed information, and information which is vetted.
“We’re gonna miss it. We’re gonna miss it tremendously,” Franklin said.
Trust factor
Prior Lake Mayor Kirt Briggs pointed to recent examples of stories published within the pages of the Prior Lake American, which not only had an impact on the community because of the information it provided – but because the papers have been a trusted news source for decades, and in some cases centuries.
“The paper was a trusted location to bring information to our citizens,” Briggs said.
One example he pointed to was regarding the introduced housing legislation known as the “missing middle housing” bills. The bills were opposed by many local leaders in the south metro area, some who wrote letters to the editors, a place where opinions could be shared within the pages of the papers.
“To me the paper sets the discourse, the topics of conversation […] then it has content around how is this going to impact me […] that to me is what I mourn the loss of,” he said.
Amenah Agunwamba, chair of the newly formed Savage Community Equity Commission, which weighed in on closely contested issues in the past year, said she is concerned for those who already struggle to be heard.
“A newspaper can be a place where marginalized voices are elevated, and we need to have a forum for community engagement that connects and bridges across differences,” Agunwamba wrote in an email to Southwest News Media. “Additionally, we need to have space for accountability for institutions and leaders. I hope that we can find a way to restore this important link for our community in the future.”
The loss of newspapers means community members will now have to rely on getting information from other sources, including the government, something Briggs views as concerning.
“It’s filtered, it’s what we want to put out which is why the loss of the newspaper is so, so devastating,” he said. “That’s what we’re losing and to me there’s not any debate.”
Franklin said he is fearful community members will become more reliant on information posted on Facebook and other social media platforms.
“What’s published doesn’t have any journalist integrity, so you have to be really careful reading what’s posted,” Franklin said.
Capitalism and journalism
Rolfsrud, who before retiring spent 35 years with Southwest News Media papers, said one of the major issues facing the newspaper industry is the need to churn a profit.
“Capitalism and journalism are not the greatest of partners,” he said. “Editors are becoming a thing of the past, as people create their own reality by clicking and reading the most outrageous of headlines that entertain.”
Citizens debated issues calmly and thoughtfully on the editorial page, Rolfsrud added. “Accuracy and truth are mottos still hanging up on the wall, but readers and viewers have to demand to be provided with information that they don’t necessarily agree with.”
It is no secret that smaller newspapers have been folding across the state and country in the last two decades. A 2023 report from Northwestern University’s Medill Local News Initiative found that since 2005, Minnesota has lost more than a third of its newspapers.
Similar community papers including the Eden Prairie News and Lakeshore Weekly News were shuttered in 2020 shortly after MediaNews Group acquired Southwest News Media.
But despite all the changes, Williams said she waited by the mailbox every Saturday in Savage waiting for the paper to arrive.
“I always waited for the mail to come every Saturday to see what was going to be in there,” she said.
After April 27, Williams, like others across Scott and Carver counties, will be left waiting and wondering if a local paper will ever return.
