2024 Story Year in Review

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Content and Conversations

A column by Dr. Catherine Squires was our most widely read story of the year, which led to a deeper magazine story and a June forum sponsored by African American Leadership Forum and University of Minnesota Press, moderated by Andrea Pierre (then of KRSM), and video-recorded by First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis. We are seeking underwriting in order to expand this type of responsiveness in 2025 to the pulse of community pain points and solutions.

The April event to celebrate our 39th anniversary brought a great mix of people together to celebrate Badass Minnesotans chosen by our members, with powerful performances from spoken word artist Muna Abdulahi, author Junauda Petrus, and the cast of Deneal Trueblood-Lynch’s award-winning “Secrets” play.

 

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LAUNCHED: Collective Health 

Thanks to the support of more than 200 Badass members around the state, there are 128 stories in our newest series, about “Collective Health.” This series focused on the needs, solutions, and action taken by community members to create a healthier society. We created an entire print magazine issue about Housing and about Mental Health — focal points that will continue in 2025. Two stories about those topics will be recognized with a Minnesota journalism award in January 2025. A few highlights:

 

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NEW: Editorial Board

To enhance our work, we created a diverse editorial board — consisting of both media partners and topic experts — that advises us monthly on story ideas. This used to be an informal query each month. Now, it is an official monthly online meeting with an established group of invitees. It reflects our authentic commitment to stories that come from the grassroots level, particularly for our unique-in-media first-person narratives. A few of the stories that came from editorial board suggestions in 2024 include:

 

 

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FOCUS: Gender-Based Violence

We maintain our deep coverage about gender-based violence, and will enhance that education with community conversations around the state in 2025. Our discussion guide about gender-based violence — produced with collaborators from Violence Free Minnesota, Esperanza United, MNCASA, and Global Rights for Women — won a national award for Community Engagement.

 

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FOCUS: Feminist Leadership

As always, we amplify and showcase the leadership of powerful, everyday people.

 

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Greater Minnesota Connections

We visited Marshall and Grand Rapids to connect with new voices in the “Hometown Values & Vision” series, funded by a small grant from First Unitarian Foundation that enabled us to visit a few Greater Minnesota communities. We also featured stories derived from our connections made in previous trips to Ortonville and Worthington. You will hear more in 2025 from people we met in those conversations, in a three-part magazine series about action inspired by people with the values and vision to proactively address local challenges.

 

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2025 EXPANSION: Healing

We know that 2025 will be a tough year in many ways. We plan to do more stories for self-care, including the official launch in mid-January of a monthly newsletter focused on Books, Arts, and Events. We tested it with two pilot issues that got high open rates. We will look for more stories about creative approaches to healing in 2025.

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ONGOING: Politics & Policy

We continue to point out the discrepancies that exist for women and people of color.

 

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From the Archives

We kicked off a “Legacy” series to showcase stories from our historical coverage, and we will deepen that work in honor of our 40th anniversary celebration on May 1. Notably, ProQuest has digitized the entire collection of Minnesota Women’s Press stories since 1985, for a feminist library collection available to academic subscribers, which will become available in mid-2025.

 

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Reader Suggestions

We continue to get great story ideas from you, our readers. What you read (according to Google Analytics data), and what you tell us you care about in surveys, shapes our coverage. Some of those prompts:

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Publisher/Editor Message

As we close out 2024 (our “Year of Healthy Collaboration”) and usher in 2025 (our “Year of Creating the Village”), I re-share a few excerpts from a talk I delivered in July 2024, which reflected on several months of repair at my house, the balance I found in local blues music, and lessons learned about vulnerability from an unusual new friendship.

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Important Note

We are the longest continuously run feminist publication in the U.S., but that does not mean our future as a media platform is secure. We nearly closed in October because of budget shortfalls, and were rejuvenated thanks largely to two generous donors as well as our capital campaign supporters. If you appreciate the very unique stories we create about Minnesota’s community-based solution-makers and first-person storytellers, please join our community.

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2025: To Be Continued 

We are offering two running aggregates of news stories.

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