Dear Racket readers, we have some big news: We’ve teamed up with five other media outlets—North News, KRSM, Heavy Table, NewPrensa, and Southwest Voices—to form the Twin Cities Media Group, a new, diverse, community-based advertising organization.
What does that mean?
At the Twin Cities Media Group (TCMG), businesses will be able to buy advertising packages that reach audiences across all six media outlets in one go. As explained in Southwest Voices’ announcement post, together we have over “17K email subscribers, nearly half a million monthly website visitors, email newsletters with open rates as high as 70%, and reach across a mix of channels like radio, digital, email, texting, and print all across the Twin Cities.” That’s a lot!
In the wise words of Paul Wellstone: "We all do better when we all do better." We believe the Twin Cities is entering another renaissance era for local media, and it’s important that we support each other along the way if we want to continue to thrive and grow. That means keeping Minnesota ad dollars in the local economy. As business owners, we're familiar with that feeling you get after buying ads through Facebook and Google, the two mega-corps who've gobbled up advertising dollars from local newsrooms over the past decade-plus. You know, the one where you ask yourself: “Did I just throw my hard-earned cash into a digital black hole?” We're hoping TCMG can help eliminate that feeling.
To be clear: Our website, which you pay to read, will never be overrun by unsettling junk ads offering “THIS ONE AMAZING WEIGHT LOSS TRICK.” You’ve already seen the extent of our sponsorship footprint with classy campaigns from Northrop, Minnesota Orchestra, and Fair State Brewing, among others. We’re not creating new ad space; we’re just hoping this new venture helps keep the existing sponsorship hopper full. And what better way to do it than by taking money from Mark Zuckerberg and his cartoonishly dystopian Metaverse? (Speaking of black holes...)
Intrigued? To learn more about what TCMG is about and to book ads, email our advertising relations manager, Vasiliki Papanikolopoulos, at vasiliki@southwestvoices.news. Interested in advertising with just Racket? Click here for all the details.
