The Star Tribune represents the mainstream media at work in Minnesota. It is the dominant voice of conventional wisdom that relentlessly peddles the left-wing line on its news pages and its editorial positions.
It is, moreover, a profitable business owned by a billionaire. Glen Taylor bought it in 2014 for $100 million. He may have assumed some of the paper’s debt in the process. It reportedly makes a substantial amount of money churning out its product.
Taylor identifies as a Republican, but he does not appear to have altered the course or direction of the newspaper. He seems to me to suffer from a few obvious limitations. I think he has a high tolerance for mediocrity and gets his news from the Star Tribune.
Last year Taylor hired former Walz administration commissioner of economic development Steve Grove to run the newspaper. In a sense it is good to have a Democrat at the top of the organization. It should makes things clear for those slow on the uptake.
In my opinion, Minnesota would be better off without the Star Tribune. Its performance adversely affects the state’s politics and public policy as well as its major institutions, generally pushing them ever further to the left. It facilitates the suppression and dissemination of relevant news affecting the left. In 2018 I summed up my observations in “The role of the Star Tribune.”
All in all, it should be difficult to imagine a worse object of philanthropy than the Star Tribune. However, that’s not how Grove sees it. In his 2024 report to readers, he advises (link in original): “We are…positioning ourselves to access funding from philanthropic sources, a growing trend in journalism. To that end, we’re hiring a development director to spearhead this new effort for the Star Tribune.”
As I say, this is the mainstream media at work in Minnesota. The Star Tribune “positions itself” to imitate the players elsewhere, holding out a tin cup to divert money from potentially worthy causes. Some inspired editorial cartoonist could aim his pen at these people and inflict a moment’s embarrassment, assuming they are capable of shame.