Minnesota Star Tribune cuts jobs and pursues nonprofit ownership structure

The Minnesota Star Tribune will cut its workforce by 15% through buyouts and layoffs, executives said Tuesday evening, just a month after the newspaper won a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the Annunciation school and church shooting.

Chief executive Steve Grove also signaled a potential new ownership structure for the news organization, which is currently fully owned by Minnesota billionaire Glen Taylor.

"This is a day that is really challenging," said Grove. "But I am optimistic about our future."

The media company, often heralded as a bright spot in the local news landscape, faces the same business model challenges as the rest of the industry. As readers increasingly turned to social media and other nontraditional information sources, advertisers followed, fueling a mass exodus of advertising dollars and declining revenues.

Grove cited the cuts as necessary to adapt to today's digital media landscape.

The Star Tribune employs around 495 people and the cuts will be made across every department. The newsroom has just under 200 journalists and will decline to about 175 while remaining one of the largest between the coasts.

Just last year, 125 employees were laid off when the company, citing printing cost savings, closed its downtown Minneapolis printing plant, outsourcing the work to Des Moines.

In an interview Tuesday night, Jeff Day, a reporter and co-chair of the Star Tribune's guild, said the union, which represents most of the newsroom, would be looking for ways to fight this decision.

"The management's argument that this decision, these layoffs, will improve our company in any way, shape or form lacks any foundation in reality," Day said.

In the companywide memo, Grove sketched out plans for its future control.

The board of directors and Taylor aim to place the Minnesota Star Tribune under foundation ownership. There are several new models emerging, like the Philadelphia Inquirer – now a for-profit media company owned by a not-for-profit foundation.

Taylor, 85, bought the Minneapolis Star Tribune in 2014, saying the newspaper held an important civic role in the state. In the Tuesday night employee memo, Grove said Taylor has "only ever invested money in its future and never once taken a profit from it," but that it was time to make a long-term plan for the organization's future stewardship.

Taylor was not made available for comment.

The announcement comes a month after the Star Tribune received the 2026 Pulitzer for breaking news and following the paper's heralded coverage of the winter's surge of federal ICE agents into the state. But vital journalism is not a guarantee of profitability.

Other storied legacy media organizations have made deep cuts recently. The Washington Post laid off more than 300 employees in February. The same month, the Atlanta Journal Constitution laid off 50 newsroom employees. Last month, National Public Radio laid off 10 journalists in a newsroom reorganization.

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.

Despite the sobering news, Grove said the Star Tribune has grown digital subscriptions 25% in the last three years.

Tuesday's staff memo also characterized staffing cuts as needed to position the Star Tribune "for growth as a digital media company." A majority of readers now come online, not in print, and digital revenue is increasingly reflecting this reality.

In 2023, Taylor hired Grove, an economic development secretary in Gov. Tim Walz's cabinet, to steer the 159-year-old news organization.

Grove outlined his vision that the company pivot from managing decline toward a posture of growth. To do so, he changed the name to the Minnesota Star Tribune to give it a statewide identity, invested behind a new website, improved backend consumer management systems and put money into a branding campaign. He hired a largely new suite of executives and has experimented with new products for niche audiences.

But financial struggles persisted. Last year, the paper's management offered buyouts to longer-serving employees.

When asked if these layoffs indicate failed strategy, Grove said, "I certainly wish this (layoff) step in our journey wasn't needed. But the shift we're trying to do is really significant."

The company said the only class of newsroom employees specifically protected from the cuts are reporters, photographers and videographers.

Grove said a foundation model could work well here given the proven generosity of Minnesotans, noted as among the most charitable in the U.S.

New digital tools, such as generative AI and Google Overviews, have put added stress on subscription- and advertising-supported news organizations by steering people toward AI summaries rather than the original reporting those overviews are often built upon.

While print subscriptions have declined, the Star Tribune maintains 7-day-a-week print delivery, an increasing rarity in a digital industry where news is a tap away on phones.

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This story was originally published June 2, 2026 at 9:19 PM.