2014 Year End Report

Minneapolis and St. Paul, and Jonathan Stegall was hired as user experience engineer. Both are new to the Twin Cities and seem to be surviving their first winter. 2014 Year End Report: Together with the rest of the our staff and contributing Positioning for a successful future journalists, we have a great team of people creating and displaying our content, serving our members and In 2014, MinnPost began positioning itself for the advertising customers, and generating the revenue to future, hiring two new top leaders and embarking on a keep MinnPost publishing. major, multi-year initiative to increase membership. A major component of our strategy for growth is to At the same time, we saw solid growth in visits to our build up our capability to attract and retain more site and in the number of members, gave our readers a members. In 2014, the Knight Foundation awarded us lot of outstanding journalism, were recognized by the a two-year grant totaling $600,000 for this purpose. Online News Association as one of the top three small For the last six months we have been working behind online news enterprises in the country, and built up our the scenes, under the direction of our new publisher, to financial reserves to a more prudent level. conduct research about our readers and to build the systems and tactics needed to attract more readers to On the leadership front, Andrew Wallmeyer, a senior become members. In 2015, we will roll out an exciting associate at the strategic consulting firm McKinsey & new program of benefits both for members at various Co., became publisher in May. Wallmeyer oversees the levels and for readers who become registered users. business side of MinnPost, including membership, advertising and sponsorship. A native of Stillwater, he Our reader research, by the way, showed a high level is a former journalist who earned his MBA at the of satisfaction with MinnPost’s content and user University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management. experience among both members and non-members. Even as future planning has proceeded, we set a new In June, Andrew Putz was named executive editor of record for annual donors, at 2,247, thanks in part to an MinnPost, replacing Roger Buoen, who retired after end-of-year campaign that exceeded our goal by 40%. leading the newsroom through its first six and a half years, but continues in a part-time editing role. We continue to build our reader base as well. In 2014, visits to MinnPost rose 6 percent, to more than 7.48 Putz joined MinnPost from Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, million. Page views rose a more modest 1 percent, where he was deputy editor. He also has served as reflecting the growth of visits on smartphones, which enterprise editor of the Philadelphia Daily News, and typically generate fewer pages per visit. top editor of Boston and Minnesota Monthly, and has twice won the national Clarion Award for feature One measure we follow closely is the number of times writing. Like the other Andrew on our executive team, per year that a MinnPost story, section front, topic or he is from Stillwater. data page gets read at least 5,000 or 10,000 times – an indicator of our reach and impact. In 2014, 185 pages Both Wallmeyer and Putz report to Joel, who remains were read at least 5,000 times – up 15 percent over CEO and Editor. Laurie, the other co-founder of 2013. And 54 of those pages were read at least 10,000 MinnPost, continues to oversee major gifts and major times – an increase of 42 percent. events including MinnRoast. Both Kramers have begun modestly cutting back on MinnPost hours but not on Advertising and sponsorship revenue, under Sally our commitment to its long-term success. Waterman’s leadership, finished the year even with 2013, but set a one-month sales record in December. We are also excited about another emerging leader, Bethany Hollenkamp, who joined MinnPost in January Our growth-capital campaign, launched in 2011, 2014 as office manager. Bethany expects to earn her surpassed its goal of $1 million. MBA from Carlson this year, and she has steadily been taking on increasing responsibility in a range of areas Over the past two years, thanks largely to the success including finance and database management. of that campaign, we have built up our cash position to just over $700,000, or about four months of expenses. And we’re very pleased with two other recent hires: This is great news for an enterprise that, until 2013, Peter Callaghan joined us to cover local government in needed to borrow money every summer to stay afloat. 1 In 2015, we expect to show a modest surplus on revenues just under $2 million. Looking ahead to 2016, when there will be no further payments from Knight and very little from our growth-capital campaign, we will need substantial growth in membership and other operating revenue to continue to break even. MinnPost continues to benefit from generous support from other foundations including McKnight, Bush, Allina/Robina, Joyce and others. Grants are listed on page 5. Tesfa Wondemagegnehu & VocalEssence performing at MinnRoast Photo by Jana Freiband. We are proud of the outstanding journalism we 2014. published in 2014, which you can read about on pages 3 and 4. Thanks to designated donations from readers, we were able to double the frequency of Artscape and continue our Earth Journal and Mental Health and Addiction beats. As mentioned above, the Online News Association recognized MinnPost as one of the three best online news sites in the nation among enterprises with fewer than 50 staff members. As always, we give heartfelt thanks to MinnPost’s hard-working editors, technology and business staff, Andrew Putz and Beth Hawkins discussing education at a journalists, advertisers, sponsors, Board of Directors, MinnPost Social event in September 2014. Photo by Jana Freiband. Advisory Council, comment moderators and other volunteers. Their names are listed throughout this report. Supporters of our two major annual events, MinnRoast and the Seventh Anniversary, are gratefully Guide to the 2014 Year End Report acknowledged on pages 8 and 9. Letter from the Co-Founders 1-2 Last but not least, a word of special appreciation to the Journalism Highlights of 2014 3-4 2,247 member-donor households who supported Financial Report 5 MinnPost financially in 2014. From Copy Boys and Foundation support Girls to Media Moguls and beyond, your names are Group-funded beats listed on pages 10 to 23. Sponsors, partners, major advertisers Who’s Who at MinnPost 2014 6-7 Readers who support our independent, thoughtful MinnRoast 2014 8 journalism as members are a diverse group, ranging from those who have done so from the beginning to Seventh Anniversary 9 those who took the plunge in 2014. If you’re not in this Donor Acknowledgment group, we hope our new member benefits program will Major Start-Up Donors 10 bring you in. Watch for it, and please respond by Foundation Supporters since 2007 10 becoming a member for the first time, re-establishing Planned Giving 10 the habit if you’ve let it lapse, or stepping up your 2014 Donors by Category 10 membership to a higher level. Reader support makes Benefactors 10 courageous, independent Minnesota journalism a Charter Members 10 Media Moguls 10 sustainable reality, and your participation is central to Pulitzer Prize Winners 11 our continued success. Washington Correspondents 11 State Capitol Bureau Chiefs 11 City Hall Reporters 11-12 Court Reporters 13 Night Police Reporters 13-17 Joel Kramer Laurie Kramer Cub Reporters 17-20 Editor and CEO Major Events and Gifts Copy Boys and Girls 20-23 2 Journalism Highlights of 2014 congressional races in Minnesota. While the election loomed large, Devin also covered Washington policy 2014 didn’t initially seem like it would be a banner questions that were particularly important to year for news. It opened promising none of the big- Minnesotans, everything from the Farm Bill to college ticket drama that had marked the previous couple of athlete labor unions and net neutrality. years. But it ended up being marked by a fascinating array of issues, events and ideas in Minnesota, from the The mood around national politics also provided the implementation of a new medical marijuana law to the context for one of our most ambitious and well- resignation of Bernadeia Johnson, Minneapolis Public received projects of the year. In the midst of the Schools superintendent. handwringing over poor voter turnout for Minnesota’s August primary, Eric Black wrote a multi-part series MinnPost was there every step of the way, providing examining voter participation in other democracies invaluable insight and analysis of the region’s most around the world. Eric also broke several stories in important stories, from our wall-to-wall coverage of 2014, the most notable of which came out of an the legislature to a revealing narrative of how troubled expansive interview with U.S. Senate candidate Mike Supreme Court candidate Michelle MacDonald McFadden. In fact, Eric’s ability to pin down managed to secure her party’s endorsement. McFadden on his policy positions was singled out by the Columbia Journalism Review as an example of And yet, for all the big stories we covered in 2014, it’s how to get relentlessly on-message politicians to impossible to highlight our best journalism without actually answer questions. talking about the journalists who produced that work. That’s particularly true in the case of our coverage of Beth Hawkins further established her Learning Curve local government in Minneapolis and St.

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