Nonprofit, non-partisan, nonfiction: EPLN’s growth and impact

The early Monday morning buzz generated by community leaders, journalists and politicians near the coffee cartons and doughnut platters took its time quieting down on Oct. 21. Nancy Tyra Lukens, Eden Prairie Local News board chair, had begun EPLN’s annual public meeting. The former mayor had moderated scores of meetings in the same lower-level city hall venue. Firm, quiet and empathetic leadership is in her DNA. The chatterers muted themselves and sat down.

She welcomed the 42 attendees and keynote speaker Jonathan Kealing, chief network officer of the Institute for Nonprofit News. Kealing has worked with Eden Prairie Local News and startup news centers nationwide. INN counts more than 450 nonprofit news center members nationwide.

Tyra Lukens also thanked Steve Schewe, EPLN publisher and CEO, and several individuals and groups for their good works and support and presented an EPLN video, a five-minute review of the past year, produced by this writer. 

Copies of EPLN’s 2024 Voter Guide and its 2023-2024 Impact Report were available near the room’s entry. Schewe wanted to talk about them. His summaries of each were fueled by high-octane optimism. This year’s printed, nonpartisan voter guide had been snail-mailed to 35,000 residents of Minnesota Senate District 49, which includes all of Eden Prairie and southern Minnetonka. 

Schewe reminded the room that Minnesota Public Radio and the StarTribune “are covering voters and voting at a much wider level. … But they can’t go to every Eden Prairie in the state with the depth of the information on candidates that we can do.”  

Referring to the clutter of un-vetted political messaging these days, the publisher described the EPLN digital news venture as “nonprofit, non-partisan and nonfiction.”

Jim Bayer, Juliana Allen, Stuart Sudak, and Mark Weber were asked to stand in recognition of their in-depth series on teenage mental health in Eden Prairie, drawing applause. The Silent Struggles series earned second place from the Minnesota Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) among stories by news outlets of all sizes statewide. The series was also a national finalist for a nonprofit news honor. Altogether, EPLN received seven SPJ awards in the past 12 months.

Schewe, who sported a signature dark blue baseball cap stitched with “EPLN” above the bill, also reported that, during the past fiscal year, half of EPLN’s $175,074 operating revenue came from donors. Grants from foundations and service organizations kicked in for most of the balance. 

That’s not a lot of money for a suburban newsroom that counts nearly 3,500 posts since its debut on Sept. 16, 2020.

EPLN has one full-time and one part-time editor, two part-time beat reporters, and two contractors. Then there are the freelancers. Story and photo stipends for freelancers barely cover the cost of a three-pizza Grubhub delivery. The tech support, publisher, accountant, and EPLN’s working board all volunteer their services.

“We are still trying to figure out how to be sustainable for the long term,” said Schewe.  EPLN’s affiliations with INN, LION Publishers (Local Independent Online News) and the Google News Initiative are helping.

EPLN’s four years of startup experience have caught the attention of benefactors and other cities that have lost newspapers. Schewe announced that the McKnight Foundation has granted $200,000 over the next two years to EPLN and startup nonprofit newsrooms in Prior Lake and Woodbury. The grant will support efforts to share critical back-office and technical resources, increase readership, and grow revenue. It will also help create the Metro Nonprofit News Network, an association designed to support regional nonprofit newsrooms. The Eden Prairie Community Foundation will manage the funds.

Schewe’s talk and EPLN’s 2023-2024 Impact Report brimmed with factoids. Here’s a new one: As of Sunday, Oct. 28, EPLN has 3,625 newsletter subscribers. Check out the Impact Report in PDF format here.

Among those gathered at the annual meeting were Roseville Rotarians Doug Root, a semiretired chemist, and Don Salverda, a retired Ramsey County commissioner. They hold weekly meetings of a growing Roseville group keen to restore a dependable local news source.

Seated in front of state Sen. Steve Cwodzinski (DFL-49, Eden Prairie), were Mike Franklin and Ryan Dahnert, co-founders of The Hub News, a nonprofit online news startup serving Shakopee and Jordan. It began publishing in early September. Kathy Saltzman of Woodbury News Net was also in the room. The former state senator co-founded a group last fall that now has a website and an online newsletter that serves Minnesota’s eighth-largest city.

Kealing praised EPLN for its progress and for responding to other towns that had lost their community newspapers. He talked about three of the key factors prompting the decline of the traditional news business: surging social media, loss of advertising revenue and hedge fund ownership of small and large media companies.

Hedge funds, like the one that shut down the old Eden Prairie News and Prior Lake American, said Kealing, don’t focus on journalism; they focus on “wringing every possible dollar” out of a publication and then selling whatever assets remain.

A recent Northwestern University study of local news media found that from 2005 to 2023, Minnesota lost 34% of its newspapers and 64% of its journalists. Nationally, during that span, almost 2,900 newspapers folded.

New business models for nonprofit newsrooms that support viable, fact-based news gathering and publishing will include grants, philanthropy and donations — a message nicely articulated by Kealing, Schewe and Tyra Lukens. 

In November and December, INN’s NewsMatch program will match dollar-for-dollar donations to Eden Prairie Local News. EPLN’s goal is to raise $20,000 in local contributions to secure $20,000 in matching funds from NewsMatch. Expect to hear from Schewe and Tyra Lukens.

As the hour ended, the coffee cartons were drained, and only a few crumbs and colored sprinkles remained on the doughnut platter. But as attendees hustled off, some remained. Their talk was animated, not exhausted. It seemed to be action and mission-driven.

Editor’s note: Writer Jeff Strate is a founding board member of Eden Prairie Local News.

For more information

•  The EPLN “About” section has links to annual reports (PDF) for the fiscal years 2024, 2023, and 2022.

•  INN’s Jonathan Kealing, EPLN’s Mark Weber, and journalist/host Mike McIntee discussed the state of local journalism on SWTV’s Democratic Visions in June. The program can be viewed on YouTube here.

•  An expanded version of EPLN’s 2024 annual meeting video can be viewed on EPLN’s YouTube channel here.