The most committed readers of Minnesota Monthly might find it hard to recognize this issue as the same publication that began as Minnesota Public Radio’s member newsletter 50 years ago this year (popular covers back then: Garrison Keillor, sheep). We now have a sleeker, more contemporary look thanks to the vision of our head art director, Jeremy Nelson, but we’re still dedicated to the same mission of sharing our state’s most compelling stories with highly engaged readers who seek a deeper connection to this incomparable place.
We underwent this redesign with the primary goal of putting more of the Minnesota back in Minnesota Monthly. Not that it ever went away. (As a young MnMo staff writer, I crisscrossed the state, from Minnesota’s northern border, crossing into Canada via an unmanned customs shack, down nearly to Iowa, to drink a root beer straight from the Spring Grove Soda bottling plant.) We just weren’t very consistent about it. In one issue we might cover vacation home rentals in cabin country and a group of young Somali-Minnesotan boys on their first trip to the Boundary Waters, then the next we might focus entirely on the Twin Cities metro.
To remedy that, we now have a new page with at least one tidbit of news from each of the state’s major geographic regions, as well as departments focused on what makes our state culturally distinct, from our embrace of the seasons, to our quirky social interactions, to our perhaps even quirkier vocabulary.
Whether you live in Aikin or Zumbrota, or anywhere in between, there are thousands of reasons—10,000, at minimum—to love Minnesota. We hope that this new format allows us to share even more of our state’s beauty and cultural uniqueness, using in-depth stories and striking images to inform and inspire—and serve as a reminder of why we live here.
So if you know of any Minnesota expats who you’re hoping to lure back, consider a MnMo gift subscription to make your case in a way that’s just a touch passive-aggressive, but mostly Minnesota Nice.
Portrait by Erika Ludwig. Hair and makeup by Margo Gordon
