“Read all about it!” A brief history of neighborhood newspapers in the Twin Cities.
By Jane McClure
More than 50 years ago, St. Paul and Minneapolis neighborhood newspapers played a unique role in fighting forces that threatened their communities.
Neighbors throughout the Twin Cities organized against an array of issues including freeway construction, slumlords, crime and what were seen as bad public policy decisions.
How could fledgling neighborhood associations and activists communicate and organize in those pre-email and Internet days?
Neighborhood newspapers began publishing in the 1960s and 1970s. These papers were largely run by volunteers who wrote stories, sold ads and pasted up pages on their kitchen tables. It wasn’t unusual for activists to schedule their community meetings after a newspaper would hit the local doorsteps.
In 1974 a group of newspaper volunteers started the Twin Cities Community Press Association. That is part of a history unique to the Twin Cities. For many years, St. Paul and Minneapolis had the largest number of urban neighborhood newspapers in the country.
The Twin Cities became home to what is believed to be the first nonprofit newspaper in the country, the West Side Voice. The Voice was founded in 1974.
One person involved in the Voice’s founding was young activist Jim Scheibel, who went on to serve on the St. Paul City Council, as the city’s mayor and as part of the Clinton administration.
The group became the Neighborhood Press Association in 1978 and the Neighborhood and Community Press Association in 1992. Members worked on issues ranging from ad sales to distribution. The group held conferences and gave awards. Some papers shared content.
Times and means of communication changed and an urban neighborhood newspaper cohort that once had almost four dozen members dwindled to fewer than a dozen between the two cities. As newspapers closed their doors, membership dwindled and the association was gone by the early 2000s.
It’s worth noting that the group of neighborhood newspapers that banded together in the 1970s isn’t our first generation of neighborhood-focused publications.
St. Paul and Minneapolis’ first papers began publishing in the 1880s and 1890s. These papers joined an already thriving community of world language newspapers and some of the nation’s first Black newspapers.
Interested in this history? The Minnesota Historical Society has preserved several early neighborhood newspapers. Some are online while others are on microfiche only.
You can also read a 1990s Ramsey County History article at https://rchs.com/publishing/catalog/ramsey-county-history-summer-1993-colorful-sometimes-contentious-st-pauls-100-year-old-neighborhood-press/
Jane McClure has written for community newspapers since she was 12. In the past she edited papers for the West Side, Frogtown and North End neighborhoods. Currently, she edits Access Press and writes for community papers including the Monitor and MyVillager.