RIP Game Informer Magazine

Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.

Let’s Pour One Out For an O.G. Gamer Mag

Employees at Game Informer found out this morning at an all-staff meeting that the video game magazine is shuttering after 33 years, effective immediately. The Minneapolis-based mag went public with a gamer slang-filled announcement on Twitter this afternoon.

"I’m completely gutted by this news. Obviously, my heart goes out to everyone that lost their jobs today," Matt Helgeson, GI's former senior features editor, tells Racket. "My time there was really an adventure of a lifetime, and it’s still hard to imagine it being gone. At our peak, our circulation was nearly 8 million, one of the biggest magazines in the country."

Game Informer launched in 1991 as an in-house newsletter for video game shop FuncoLand, offering product sneak peeks, game reviews, and industry news. When GameStop bought the locally headquartered chain in 2000, the magazine got a major reader boost; in addition to being sold in shops across the country, free subs became a perk for folks on the store’s loyalty program. By 2011, Game Informer was the third largest magazine in the U.S. in terms of circulation. During the last decade or so, however, the magazine began focusing on website content, and added a weekly podcast. 

While being owned by GameStop initially was an asset for growth, in recent years it became a liability. In June, the Texas-based company reported a $32.3 million first-quarter loss as gamers continue to shift from physical game copies to online purchases. GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen is also a continual source of bad press, whether he’s Trump fangirling, emailing employees to stop being “money wasters,” or getting sued by Bed Bath & Beyond for $47 million.

"GameStop has always been a bone dumb and lousy company, and the incredible lack of class they showed today—by closing down the website and not even offering the staff a chance to write a genuine statement of sadness and gratitude to the readers—is just another example of it," Helgeson says. "Some amazing people lost their jobs today, and video games lost yet another important outlet to corporate greed and stupidity. I’m just glad I have my memories because it was really a hell of a time."

Let's Meet the Strib's New Opinion Editor

Though I (Keith) am already on record as saying that a modern newspaper has no need for an opinion section, except maybe to gin up hate clicks, I want to give the Strib’s new opinion editor, Phil Morris, a shot at proving me wrong. But Morris, a lifelong Ohioan and onetime Cleveland Plain Dealer columnist, contributed his first piece today, and it’s not exactly visionary.

Let’s begin with the headline: “I can see already that there’s depth to this state.” Thanks? In the paragraphs that follow, Morris recycles platitudes of how Minnesota is more than red, blue, and purple regions; he writes of the need for us to come together, and of how “people care mostly about the same things.” Like his boss, Strib CEO/publisher Steve Grove, Morris communicates as though he’s running for office instead of working at a newspaper. That leads to overreaches like this:

The fact that Gov. Tim Walz has been highly visible in the vice president sweepstakes conversation for more than a week, even as former President Donald Trump and Sen. JD Vance made their case to Minnesota, demonstrates the relevancy, vibrancy and openness of the Land of 10,000 Lakes.

Is that what that demonstrates? 

And Morris says of Anthony Edwards’ famed “Bring ya ass!” invitation, “It wasn’t a suggestion. It’s more a clarion call useful in the search for community and understanding.” Is that what it was?

Really, no one is looking for the Star Tribune to unify Minnesota, fellas. If you want to improve the state, start small: Just stop publishing Katherine Kersten and recycling Chicago Tribune editorials. 

North Shore Lodging News: More Lutsen Lodge Fire Scrutiny; Duluth’s Twirliest Hotel for Sale

This past February, a fire destroyed Lutsen Lodge, the state's oldest operating resort. The loss was mourned by generations of Minnesotans who built memories there, and eyebrows across the state began rising as we learned more about the lodge’s owner, Bryce Campbell. Campbell had acquired Lutsen Lodge for over $5 million in 2018, with ambitious, multi-million dollar plans to redevelop the historic property.

But, as Brielle Bredsten wrote this week in an illuminating longform piece for the Duluth News Tribune, the newish owner was plagued by “Minnesota liquor tax delinquencies, state fees for unpermitted work, unresolved fire code violations and multiple lawsuits in Minnesota District Court from contractors, employees and property owners who say they were never paid.” Hmm… We encourage you to read Bredsten’s entire timeline of Campbell’s turbulent ownership, which came into renewed focus this week as news broke that he could lose his $15 million purchase from 2020, Superior Shores Resort in Two Harbors. Hmm! It’ll be quite interesting to see what the State Fire Marshal's ongoing Lutsen Lodge investigation ultimately concludes. 

Shifting slightly down the shore...

Wanna buy one of the most eye-grabbing hotels in downtown Duluth? The 16-story, 196-unit Radisson Hotel Duluth-Harborview just hit the market for $15.8 million, reports Caitlin Anderson at the Biz Journal. Located at 505 W. Superior St., the cylindrical hotel was built in 1970, underwent a $6 million renovation over the past decade, and features six event spaces, a heated pool, hot tub, sauna, business center, and Harbor 360—the rotating restaurant located at the tippy-top. The online reviews aren’t what you’d describe as “great,” but hey, tough to beat that location blocks from Canal Park.

“It was just time to sell,” Carl Kaeding, founder/president of current owner Bloomington-based Kaeding Development Group, tells Anderson. Adds Jon Ruzicka of commercial real estate firm Marcus & Millichap, which is tasked with selling the Harborview: “We are thrilled to be marketing such an iconic building in such a sought-after market… This acquisition, priced at less than three times its room revenue, marks the seldom available opportunity to acquire a hotel in this market at such an attractive metric.”

WALZ WATCH International

At this point, Tim Walz VP speculation is so heated that we could do a new edition of WALZ WATCH every day. Should we? Almost certainly not. Will we? On a Friday afternoon as we careen into the weekend? I think you already know the answer. 

The Minnesota guv is the subject of two glowing pieces today. There's this one, from the Washington Post, with the headline "Could Tim Walz go from teaching history to being part of it?" In it, Ben Terris chats with Walz's former classmates and colleagues at a fundraiser at Urban Growler Brewing Co. “We were all like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is wild,’” one former Walz student, Ann Vote (apparently her real name), says of seeing his name on the VP shortlist. “But I don’t get the sense that everyone is completely shocked. It’s sort of like, ‘Darn right he’s on that list. Absolutely he should be!’” Elsewhere, Walz is described by a colleague at Mankato West as "very outgoing, very gregarious: “If there were 100 people in a room and 99 loved him, he would work on the one who didn’t until they did too.”

Across the pond, there's this one from The Independent: "Tim Walz was the first one to call Republicans ‘weird’. Progressives want him for Kamala Harris’s VP." 

“It's one of those things where Minnesotans are having this [moment] like: Oh my gosh, do we have to share him with the rest of the country?” Minnesota Sen. Erin Maye Quade tells The Independent's Eric Garcia. “This was a really lovely secret that we kept from the rest of the rest of the country. Like, they still think we're flyover world.”

Closer to home, there's reporting in The Hill that former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is pushing for Walz. A source told the D.C. news site that Pelosi "is always especially fond of former House colleagues," a pretty direct nod toward Walz.