Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.
Minnesota Star Tribune to Be Printed in Iowa
Monday at noon, Star Tribune employees received a memo from CEO/acclaimed author Steve Grove about the future (or lack thereof) of the newspaper's Minneapolis printing facility.
"Our journey to transform the Minnesota Star Tribune into a modern digital media company has had many chapters already, and today we’re entering a new one: we are no longer going to be operating our own printing facility," Grove writes, adding that the plant produces at just 18% capacity. "In the coming months, we’ll begin the transition to have our newspaper printed by the Gannett printing facility in Des Moines, Iowa."
That means the Heritage plant will close on December 27, and the company will then sell the valuable North Loop property. Around "125 of our colleagues will be affected," Grove writes, by which he means "laid off." Due to the realities of transmitting deadline-dependent stories to Iowa, "print subscribers may notice some content changes," the publisher notes, though delivery “will continue without interruption.” The St. Paul Pioneer Press, which also publishes at Heritage, will also begin printing at the Gannett facility in Des Moines, MPR News reports. (The PiPress sold its former printing facility 10 years ago.)
The Strib has been printed locally for 158 years, the past 38 of 'em at the current Heritage building. (Quick aside: I've previously worked at the now-demolished Strib HQ on Portland Avenue, where the basement held remnants of the facility that once existed there, and also at Heritage, where a goddamn train pulls in with giant reams of Canadian paper.)
"This is very big, though not surprising news," retired Stribber Pamela Miller writes via Facebook. "And painful for those of us whose lives for so long revolved around print newspapers. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution recently went to digital only, and the Strib probably isn't far behind, despite what publisher Steve Grove says in this article."
Speaking of that article (gift link), reporter Brooks Johnson quotes... only his highest-ranking boss, Grove. In the spirit of not exclusively quoting that guy, we reached out the union that represents 205 mostly newsroom Strib workers, the Star Tribune NewsGuild. (The laid-off plant workers belong to several other, different unions.) Here's what Guild reps had to say...
We stand in solidarity with our fellow union members at our Heritage printing plant who are losing their jobs. It's a sad end of an era of 158 years of printing our publication in Minnesota and we’re disappointed the Minnesota Star Tribune will no longer be printed in Minnesota by Minnesota union workers.
Let us turn to baseless speculation about that North Loop parcel's future! Lots of folks online are dreaming about what a new Timberwolves arena could look at the ol' Heritage site—color us intrigued.
To give you a sense of how big the Strib’s possible redevelopment site is, it’s in yellow and the whole North Loop is in red. You could build a basketball arena there!
— David Brauer (@dbrauer.net) 2025-09-08T18:24:50.372Z
Hegseth's War on Women
In the coming stupid, stupid years, we'll need to keep tabs on how much coverage is too much about Pete Hegseth, the ex-Fox News host from Forest Lake, Minnesota, who's (allegedly) white-knuckling through his (alleged) functional alcoholism to lead the freshly rebranded Department of War.
This new long read from The Baffler makes the cut. In it, reporter Jasper Craven compares and contrasts the military records of Hegseth, whose Kill Company brigade tallied their Iraqi death tolls on a whiteboard, and Leigh Ann Hester, the first woman soldier to be ever be awarded the Silver Star for combat. Hegseth, writing in his 2024 book The War on Warriors, appears jealous of Hester and angry at the military’s “political” awards system.
And that serves as a jumping off point to dive deep into Hegseth's general relationship with women over the years which, spoiler, ain't great. The article explores his debauchery, allegations of rape and abuse, and "rampant cheating."
Today, Hegseth's apparent disdain for advancements made by woman soldiers over the years is reportedly coloring his work (term used charitably) as Secretary of War. "Hegseth is working to reverse this progress, purging the Pentagon of numerous senior women and trans people and relitigating the issue of women in combat," Craven writes.
Climate Change: Still Bad!
That's according to meteorologist Sven Sundgaard, whose latest for Bring Me the News examines why fall in Minnesota has gotten so stinkin' hot.
Over the past several decades, he writes that average fall temps have crept by 5.2%—more or less mirroring a statewide trend; Minnesota and Maine have the fastest-warming autumns in the lower 48.
"What would have been fairly normal a few decades ago has now become infrequent and attention-grabbing," he writes of the recent chilly stretch. That's because, since 1970, we've added an average of 24 days between September and November that hit warmer-than-norm temps. Consult Sundgaard's story for alarming graphs and charts galore.
Related: According to a new study from the journal Nature Climate Change that's making the national rounds, higher average temperatures are encouraging U.S. households to consume more sugary drinks and ice cream (twist our American arms...). In other words: The climate crisis might be exacerbating the obesity crisis.
Are You Ready for Some Zen-Ass Football?
As explored in great detail throughout last week's episode of RacketCast with sportswriter Arif Hasan, the Vikings will kickoff the 2025 season tonight with an unknown "ball of potential" under center. Over at ESPN, fans got to know first-year starter J.J. McCarthy a bit better with this piece on the QB's semi-eccentric gameday rituals.
There's his warrior face paint, which he explains by citing a proverb attributed to 17th century writer/swordsman Miyamoto Musashi: "It is better to be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war." There are his extended morning meditation sessions (McCarthy meditated under the goalposts pregame at Michigan, but does so in private now), his "variety of external stimulants," and his high-tech Shiftwave chair, which is billed by its creator, an ex-Discovery Channel host, as "the world’s most advanced nervous system regulation device." We learn that McCarthy, 22, will vibe out to "a collection of audio tones called '963Hz'" and also plenty of Bob Marley, though we must pretentiously scold the signal caller for picking a painfully obvious favorite Marley track, "Jamming." (Ex-Vikes QB Kirk Cousins, as you might remember, is a big-time Creed guy.)
Now heed this observation from me, a lifelong Green Bay Packers fans: Quarterbacks get stranger and stranger as they age, and it sounds like young McCarthy is well on his way.
