In the last six months, The Minnesota Star Tribune has doubled subscribers and fully transformed its business and brand to power the future of local news.
Didn't expect a positive story about a local newspaper, did you?
While countless publications have shuttered over the last two decades (3000 local newspapers have shut down since 2005), The Minnesota Star Tribune has remained a local favorite in the Midwest and a top 10 newspaper nationally. But in 2023 its future looked uncertain as it faced a series of challenges simultaneously: rapid changes in AI and technology, consumer behavior, revenue and monetization and cultivating talent. Additionally, the publication’s digital experience relied on outdated technology, affecting speed, quality and communication across the newsroom.
At this critical moment in the newspaper's 154-year-old history, The Star Tribune opted to transform its business and brand to not only create a sustainable future, but it ensure it's product could fuel local journalism for years to come.
After meticulous operational, business, editorial, brand and technology-driven transformation work, The Minnesota Star Tribune is born anew. An immersive news experience that's more accessible for younger readers. Premium opportunities for advertisers to reach engaged readers. Built with best-in-class technology and a system designed for speed and scale.
The eulogy on the publishing industry had been written, but The Minnesota Star Tribune changed the narrative—and they've only just begun.
The Minnesota Star Tribune would make a myriad of seismic changes, all rooted in a strategy that began with extensive listening tours and community engagement efforts. This quickly revealed a strong desire among Minnesotans for comprehensive statewide news coverage and a deeper connection with their primary news source. In response, the newspaper officially added "Minnesota" to its name, becoming The Minnesota Star Tribune, to reflect its commitment to serving the entire state.
To further align with its audience's expectations, the Minnesota Star Tribune reimagined its brand identity, highlighted by a vibrant new logo — a distinctive North Star emblem symbolizing guidance and reliability. The refreshed color palette and typography were also created to resonate with Minnesota's one-of-a-kind Midwest, humble, but bold identity.
The digital transformation involved a complete overhaul of the Star Tribune's online platforms. The newspaper rebuilt its website and mobile app using modern, fast, reliable technologies like Next.js, React, TypeScript, and TailwindCSS. This redevelopment ensured a responsive, user-friendly experience across devices, catering to younger audiences, enhancing accessibility and opening the door for easier integration with advertisers.
Perhaps most important of all, by adopting GraphQL and leveraging Vercel, the newspaper streamlined back-end services, enhanced deployment speed and built a robust breaking news feature (which would go on to flawlessly support the newspaper's highest traffic day ever!).
The brand redesign introduced immersive, visual storytelling, flexible page-building tools, and a premium advertising system, all aimed at celebrating content and engaging a broader audience. The unified codebase improved SEO performance and reduced maintenance efforts, positioning the Minnesota Star Tribune to easily flex with future technological advancements.
Internally, the adoption of collaborative tools, a new content management system, and a vibrant new brand foundation instilled a 'can-do', faster-paced culture in the Minnesota Star Tribune team.
Introducing sweeping changes doesn't always pay off, and the pressure is intense given the costly, time-intensive nature of business and brand overhauls. But for Minnesota Star Tribune, these investments not only revitalized its business, but also reinforced its role as a trusted, modern news source dedicated to serving the diverse communities of Minnesota.
The day after the August 2024 launch, Aron Pilhofer, The Minnesota Star Tribune's Chief Product Officer, shared: "The challenge was daunting to say the least: Design, rebrand and relaunch an entire website in a ridiculously short period of time. This was two years of work compressed into about six months. The results are nothing short of spectacular. The relaunch is the most public manifestation of a much deeper transformation our company and culture are undergoing. That comes through in literally every pixel."
