West St. Paul Reader works on a member-supported model. We need your help to keep our neighborhood news coverage going. Join our member drive today.
- Be informed: We cover West St. Paul City Council sessions and ISD 197 School Board meetings, local elections and city improvements, new businesses and interesting neighbors. When people want to know what’s happening in their neighborhood, we have the answer.
- Build community: An informed community is an engaged community. When people know what’s going on, they’re invested. They show up. They volunteer. You can see it in action—almost two-thirds of the City Council’s recent committee appointments were West St. Paul Reader members. Our locally-designed stickers are on water bottles, laptops, and bumpers. We’re constantly building community pride.
- Meetings: Almost every Monday we attend a local government meeting in person. We’ve covered City Council meetings going back to 2019. That’s a depth of content that gives context and accountability. Sometimes meetings overlap, and we need to hire extra help. Sometimes meetings are controversial, and everyone wants to know what happened. Sometimes meetings are unremarkable at the time, but an action becomes important later. We need to be in the room where it happens, not just show up after the fact.
- Contributors: Not only do we rely on contributors to expand our coverage (like these incredible photos), but it’s also a way to give experience to the next generation of journalists. We currently have our first-ever paid intern, an experiment we hope to continue. Your support means we can continue to expand our coverage and give young journalists incredible opportunities—all while giving them a fair wage.
- No other coverage: Regional media rarely covers our community, and hyper-local outlets are disappearing. If you want to be informed about local issues, you need to support local news.
A recent feature from HastingsNow highlights our “relentless commitment to keeping the community informed.” They note that we “cultivate local pride and community engagement.”
Local News Needs Support
But none of that happens without your support. Since the beginning we’ve relied on member support to make neighborhood news possible. Help us celebrate five years of informing the community by joining our member drive today.
Join our growing community of supporters for a more engaged West St. Paul.
