CORRECTION: We recorded this interview on a Friday afternoon. The following Saturday morning Kathleen reached out to me and asked me to correct the record. At 57:15:41 she says "81st Airborne" when she meant the 82nd. The fact that she remembered this the detail in the early weekend morning speaks a lot to her commitment to getting the details right. Thanks Kathleen!In this episode, I sit down with Kathleen Hennessy, the Managing Editor of the Star Tribune, to talk about how news is actually made in Minnesota. Kathleen has worked everywhere from the Associated Press to The New York Times, and now helps run the largest newsroom in the Upper Midwest.We talk about who really holds influence inside a modern newsroom, how breaking-news decisions happen, the difference between transparency and anonymity, and why Minnesota struggles to have hard public conversations. Kathleen also walks me through the morning of the Melissa Hortman shooting and how the Star Tribune mobilizes behind the scenes at moments when the state is watching.CHAPTERS00:00 — Why Kathleen Hennessy came to the Star Tribune01:40 — How newsroom leadership and ownership actually work04:10 — Covering power in Minnesota: business, politics, and influence07:22 — Inside the newsroom during breaking news12:03 — The morning of the Hortman assassination16:02 — How stories get written now (live blogs vs. traditional reporting)20:00 — Minnesota’s relationship with hard conversations24:15 — Guns, politics, and generational echoes30:57 — Journalism vs. creators: authenticity and independence37:04 — How the Star Tribune decides what gets covered49:42 — What content actually converts subscribers51:48 — Why and when they use anonymous sources

For more than a year, I’ve been talking with Steve Grove about the future of news, the Minesota Star Tribune, and what it means to lead a civic institution in 2025.

In this conversation, I finally got to ask him the questions on the record: the role of billionaire owners in journalism, whether local news can survive the digital age, what really happened inside DEED during Covid, and why he chose to write a memoir that reads suspiciously like a political launch.

Steve is the CEO and publisher of the Star Tribune and former head of DEED, and he spent years at YouTube shaping the early creator era. This isn’t a surface-level media interview. It’s a deeper look at how journalism actually works, how power moves behind the scenes, and what’s at stake for Minnesota.

If you want more conversations like this, subscribe to One Hour Detours. And if you want more of my regular Minnesota stories, you can always find them on One Minute Tours.

You can purchase Steve's book, "How I Found Myself in the Midwest" here: https://amzn.to/49efESL (affiliate link).

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Chapters

00:00 Who Steve Grove is and how long we’ve been talking

01:03 Writing a book while running the Star Tribune

04:20 The accidental political energy of his memoir

07:53 What government service really looks like from the inside

10:14 Why bureaucracy frustrates people but still matters

12:19 How polarization affects Minnesota differently

17:15 Has our culture actually recovered from Covid

20:10 The Minnesota paradox and the gaps we don’t talk about

23:23 Steve’s move from government to running the Star Tribune

24:31 Closing the printing plant and what that means

27:01 How digital subscriptions changed the business

29:00 The value of print, serendipity, and the E-edition

33:48 How the Star Tribune sets the agenda

36:03 The Pete Hegseth text messages story

39:47 What a publisher actually does inside an investigative scoop

41:14 The editorial independence question

41:35 Is it good for America to have media owned by billionaires

43:33 Conflicts of interest and whether they matter

44:31 Who should own the news in the future

46:09 How creators changed the landscape

47:20 Should creators be doing the job journalism used to do

49:04 What Steve learned from the early YouTube era