Online News Fights to Live On Its Merits

MinnPost is one of a group of regional news sites, like the Texas Tribune (texastribune.org), The Bay Citizen (baycitizen.org), and VoiceofSanDiego.org, that are trying to use the cost advantages of digital news — no presses, no trucks — to overcome other fundamental challenges, chief among them that readers continue to see news on the Web as a commodity that will always be free.

"We want MinnPost to be able to stand on its own by 2012, and I have a very aggressive definition of sustainability, which is that we have enough revenues to survive without foundation money," said founder and chief executive Joel Kramer. "A lot of the foundation money for journalism goes to large, investigative-oriented sites, and I don't know that there will always be money for sites like ours where the emphasis is on regional coverage."