Just a Month After a Pulitzer, the Star Tribune Cut 65 Jobs. Then Came the Nonprofit Pivot.
It's the kind of headline that makes you do a double‑take.
A Pulitzer Prize. A month later, layoffs. And right in the middle of it all, a quiet proposal to turn the whole operation into a foundation‑owned newsroom.
That's the reality the Minnesota Star Tribune is living right now.
On Tuesday evening, CEO Steve Grove delivered the kind of news no one in a newsroom wants to hear. But here's the thing about this story: it's not really about the Star Tribune. Not entirely.
It's about a moment every local newspaper in America is either already facing or will face soon. And the way this 159‑year‑old Minnesota institution responds might just become the blueprint, for better or worse.
Wait, What Actually Happened? (The Straight Facts)
Let's get the numbers out of the way first.
The Minnesota Star Tribune announced it will cut its workforce by 15% , approximately 65 jobs, through a combination of buyouts and layoffs.
Here's how those cuts break down across the organization:
- Total workforce before cuts: Approximately 495 people
- Newsroom journalists before cuts: Just under 200
- Newsroom journalists after cuts: Approximately 175
- Non‑newsroom positions: Cuts across every department
Important nuance: Grove explicitly stated that "journalists who focus on news gathering, including reporters, photographers, and videographers, are not among the affected groups." Translation? The people going out into the field are protected. The cuts targeted other functions.
But here's the kicker, this isn't the first time the Star Tribune has cut deep.
Just last year, the company laid off 125 employees when it closed its downtown Minneapolis printing plant, outsourcing print operations to a Gannett facility in Des Moines, Iowa.
So total job losses in roughly 12 months? Nearly 190 positions from a company that employs about 500 people. That's not trimming fat. That's reshaping bone.
The union, represented by the Star Tribune NewsGuild, isn't taking this quietly. Jeff Day, a reporter and co‑chair of the guild, told reporters: "The management's argument that this decision, these layoffs, will improve our company in any way, shape or form lacks any foundation in reality."
Wait, Didn't They Just Win a Pulitzer?
Yes. And the timing is what makes this so strange.
A month before the layoff announcement, the Star Tribune won the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News for its coverage of the Annunciation school and church shooting.
A Pulitzer is the Super Bowl of journalism. It means you've produced work that's not just good, it's historically significant. For a local paper to win one is enormous.
And yet, a month later, 65 people are out of work.
Here's the uncomfortable truth the Pulitzer didn't solve: vital journalism is not a guarantee of profitability. You can produce the best reporting of your career and still run out of money. The bills don't care about your trophies.
The Star Tribune isn't alone here. The Washington Post laid off more than 300 employees in February. The Atlanta Journal‑Constitution laid off 50 newsroom staff the same month. NPR laid off 10 journalists just last month.
We'll come back to this pattern in a minute. But first, why is this happening at all?
Why Is This Happening? (The Revenue Meltdown)
Let me paint you a picture.
Imagine running a restaurant where, every year, 15% of your customers just stop showing up, and the ones who replace them spend half as much.
That's the newspaper business right now.
Grove told The New York Times that the paper has been losing 15% of its print subscribers annually. Every year, they start smaller than the year before. Every year, the floor drops out a little more.
Why? Because readers have moved online. Advertisers followed. And the digital ad dollars that replaced print revenue are smaller, fragmented, and mostly captured by Google and Facebook.
This is the structural crisis that's been hiding in plain sight for twenty years.
And it's not just a Star Tribune problem. Nationally, the news industry has lost 75% of its jobs over the last two decades, according to a study by Northwestern University's Medill journalism school. Over 270,000 newspaper jobs have vanished since 2005. More than 3,500 newspapers have closed.
The local news ecosystem isn't just sick. It's in hospice.
So what do you do when your revenue model is dying? You try something new.
From Billionaire to Foundation: What "Nonprofit Ownership" Really Means
This is the part of the story that most coverage rushes past, but it's actually the most important part.
The Star Tribune is currently fully owned by Minnesota billionaire Glen Taylor, who bought the paper in 2014 for nearly $100 million. Taylor, who also owns the Minnesota Timberwolves (for now) and built a printing empire, has reportedly "only ever invested money in its future and never once taken a profit from it."
But Taylor is 85. And he's signaling that it's time to think about what happens next.
Grove announced that the board and Taylor intend to place the Minnesota Star Tribune under foundation ownership.
Here's what that actually means.
Not a "Nonprofit" in the Way You Think
The Star Tribune wouldn't convert into a 501(c)(3) charitable organization. Instead, it would become a for‑profit business owned by a not‑for‑profit foundation, similar to what the Philadelphia Inquirer has done.
Think of it like this: the foundation owns the company. The company makes money. The foundation takes that money and reinvests it into journalism (and maybe other charitable causes). Nobody's taking cash out of the business to buy a boat.
The advantage? The paper can accept tax‑deductible philanthropic donations to support core operations. Just like public radio, but for a daily newspaper.
This isn't theoretical. The Star Tribune already launched a Local News Fund in 2024, a charitable fund under the Minneapolis Foundation that allows readers to donate and write it off on their taxes. Glen Taylor's own foundation even offered to match individual donations up to $500,000.
So why go all the way to foundation ownership? Because it creates permanent stewardship. The paper's long‑term survival wouldn't depend on one billionaire's willingness to keep writing checks. It would be owned by an institution designed to last.
The Controversy
Not everyone loves this idea.
Patrick Coolican, editor‑in‑chief of the Minnesota Reformer (a true nonprofit newsroom), told Twin Cities Business: "I don't see why they need to be competing for limited philanthropic dollars," noting the paper is owned by a billionaire and seems quite robustly staffed.
Fair point. Nonprofit dollars aren't infinite. And every dollar that goes to a billionaire‑owned newspaper is a dollar that doesn't go to a small, independent local newsroom that has no other lifeline.
On the other hand, Tanner Curl, executive director of MinnPost, took a more pragmatic view: "We have quite a bit of work to do to have journalism thought of as a critical community asset." If the Star Tribune entering this space helps normalize the idea that journalism deserves philanthropic support, maybe everyone wins.
Why This Matters Beyond Minnesota
Here's where I need you to zoom out with me for a second.
The Star Tribune isn't a special case. It's a canary in the coal mine.
Consider what's happening across the industry:
- Foundation funding has overtaken advertising as the most common revenue source among local digital newsrooms. Approximately 80% of nonprofit newsrooms and 60% of for‑profits reported philanthropy as a revenue stream in 2025.
- Nonprofit newsrooms outperform for‑profits in reader revenue growth (23% vs. 9.5%), driven by donor engagement and mission alignment.
- Press Forward, a philanthropic initiative launched in 2023, has already distributed more than $400 million to local newsrooms.
The traditional newspaper business model, subscriptions plus ads, is not coming back. It's not a temporary dip. It's a permanent structural shift.
So what replaces it?
This is the question every local news organization is trying to answer. And right now, there are three main answers:
None of these are perfect. The billionaire model is one heart attack or change of interest away from collapse. The nonprofit model depends on fundraising cycles and donor fatigue. The foundation model is new and largely untested at scale.
But the old model is dead. So we try the new ones.
What Comes Next? (For Journalists, Readers, and the Industry)
Let me be honest with you.
I don't know if the foundation ownership model will work. Nobody does. It's too new.
But I know what won't work. Continuing to pretend that a 2015 revenue strategy can fund a 2026 newsroom.
Here's what I'm watching over the next 12 months:
For the Star Tribune specifically:
- How the union responds. The NewsGuild has already signaled it will fight these cuts. That fight will shape what the "new" Star Tribune looks like.
- Whether foundation ownership actually happens. It's currently a "plan to explore," not a done deal. The mechanics of transferring a for‑profit newspaper to foundation ownership are complicated.
- How readers react. Digital subscriptions have grown 25% in three years, which is genuinely impressive. But will Minnesotans donate to a newspaper like they donate to public radio? That's the bet Grove is making.
For the rest of the industry:
- Watch for copycats. If the Star Tribune successfully transitions to foundation ownership, expect to see other mid‑sized metro papers try the same thing within 18 months.
- Watch for consolidation. The alternative to foundation ownership isn't sustainability. It's extinction. The Medill report tracked 136 newspaper closures in the past year alone. That's more than two papers a week.
- Watch for what replaces local news when it disappears. The counties that lose their local paper also tend to see increased political polarization, lower voter turnout, and higher local government spending (because nobody's watching).
There's no clean moral here. No villain, no hero, no simple solution.
But there is a question, one that every community with a local newspaper is going to have to answer:
What is journalism worth when nobody has to pay for it?
The Star Tribune is betting that the answer is more than we think. That if you create a structure that allows people to choose to support great journalism, enough of them will say yes.
It might work. It might fail spectacularly.
But at least they're trying something new.
And in an industry that has spent twenty years watching its own funeral, trying something new is the only real option left.
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