Minnesota Independent
Encyclopedia
The Minnesota Independent, formerly Minnesota Monitor, and sometimes known as MnIndy, is an independent online newsmagazine. It launched in August 2006, with a focus on coverage of political issues. The newsmagazine is funded by the American Independent News Network.

Background

Minnesota Independent is staffed by both salaried reporters and paid fellow
Fellow
A fellow in the broadest sense is someone who is an equal or a comrade. The term fellow is also used to describe a person, particularly by those in the upper social classes. It is most often used in an academic context: a fellow is often part of an elite group of learned people who are awarded...

s who receive a stipend for their writing contributions. The initial pool of writers included a number of journalists and liberal Minnesota blog
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...

gers, including original site editor Robin Marty, Somali
Somali people
Somalis are an ethnic group located in the Horn of Africa, also known as the Somali Peninsula. The overwhelming majority of Somalis speak the Somali language, which is part of the Cushitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family...

 journalist Abdi Ayne (who left to work for the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 and is now employed by the Voice of America
Voice of America
Voice of America is the official external broadcast institution of the United States federal government. It is one of five civilian U.S. international broadcasters working under the umbrella of the Broadcasting Board of Governors . VOA provides a wide range of programming for broadcast on radio...

), Joe Bodell and others. Later, the site brought on board professional journalists, such as Eric Black, who had written for the Star Tribune
Star Tribune
The Star Tribune is the largest newspaper in the U.S. state of Minnesota and is published seven days each week in an edition for the Minneapolis-Saint Paul metropolitan area. A statewide version is also available across Minnesota and parts of Wisconsin, Iowa, South Dakota, and North Dakota. The...

, and former City Pages
City Pages
City Pages is an alternative weekly newspaper serving the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area. It features news, film, theatre and restaurant reviews, and music criticism. It is printed in a tabloid format, and is available free every Wednesday...

 writers Paul Demko and Molly Priesmeyer.

The site is currently edited by Paul Schmelzer, and boasts traffic of about 150,000 unique visitors per month. Traffic surpassed 250,000 in the month preceding the 2008 U.S. elections and surpassed 260,000 unique monthly visits in April 2009. A week after election day, the Center for Independent Media cut funding for two of six full-time staff members, Andy Birkey and Molly Priesmeyer, and for the entire freelance staff. Birkey has since been hired back, and a freelance budget, albeit smaller, was reinstated.

History

Minnesota Independent has broken a number of major stories in its brief existence. During the Keith Ellison
Keith Ellison (politician)
Keith Maurice Ellison is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 2007. He is a member of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. The district centers on Minneapolis. He was re-elected in 2010. Ellison is a co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.He is the first Muslim to be elected to the...

 Qur'an oath controversy
Qur'an oath controversy of the 110th United States Congress
In mid-November 2006 it was reported that Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to the United States Congress , "will take his oath of office with his hand upon the Qur'an, the Islamic holy book." In reaction to the news, conservative media pundit Dennis Prager criticized the decision in his...

, the Independent's Abdi Aynte reported that Keith Ellison would not change his mind about being sworn in on the Qur'an. The Independent was the first to report that Living Word Christian Center may have violated IRS guidelines during a speech at the Church by Michele Bachmann. The story resulted in an ethical complaint being filed by CREW
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington is a nonprofit 501 organization that describes itself as "dedicated to promoting ethics and accountability in government and public life by targeting government officials – regardless of party affiliation – who sacrifice the common good to...

 against the church.

The site also broke news that Minnesota United States Attorney
United States Attorney
United States Attorneys represent the United States federal government in United States district court and United States court of appeals. There are 93 U.S. Attorneys stationed throughout the United States, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands...

 Rachel Paulose
Rachel Paulose
Rachel Kunjummen Paulose is an attorney for the Securities and Exchange Commission in Miami, United States. She is the former U.S. Attorney for the District of Minnesota. Palouse resigned the position of U.S. Attorney on November 19, 2007...

 was under investigation for mishandling classified information, and that a staffer for Rep. Michele Bachmann
Michele Bachmann
Michele Marie Bachmann is a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives, representing , a post she has held since 2007. The district includes several of the northern suburbs of the Twin Cities, such as Woodbury, and Blaine as well as Stillwater and St. Cloud.She is currently a...

 had sent out an emailed plea for support that violated house ethics rules.

Minnesota Independent writers have won numerous awards. Reporter Andy Birkey won a 2010 Page One Award from the Society of Professional Journalists for best continuing coverage of the controversial Christian ministry You Can Run But You Cannot Hide. Media writer Paul Schmelzer won a 2008 Frank Premack Award for Public Affairs Journalism from the University of Minnesota School of Journalism and a 2nd Place in the 2006 Society of Professional Journalists Page One Awards. The site was nominated for the Koufax Awards in 2007, and Andy Birkey was a finalist for the 2007 Online Journalism Award for his coverage of LGBT
LGBT
LGBT is an initialism that collectively refers to "lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender" people. In use since the 1990s, the term "LGBT" is an adaptation of the initialism "LGB", which itself started replacing the phrase "gay community" beginning in the mid-to-late 1980s, which many within the...

 issues. In 2008, the site won three Society of Professional Journalists Page One Awards, and in 2009 increased the number of SPJ prizes to eight, including four first-place awards. Among independent online news enterprises it won best single news story (Paul Demko), best use of multimedia (Newsroom), best use of video (Paul Schmelzer) and best news blog (Newsroom).

Editorial Stance

The Minnesota Independents focus and editorial slant is politically left. Fellows have been drawn from media outlets including City Pages
City Pages
City Pages is an alternative weekly newspaper serving the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area. It features news, film, theatre and restaurant reviews, and music criticism. It is printed in a tabloid format, and is available free every Wednesday...

 and the Star Tribune
Star Tribune
The Star Tribune is the largest newspaper in the U.S. state of Minnesota and is published seven days each week in an edition for the Minneapolis-Saint Paul metropolitan area. A statewide version is also available across Minnesota and parts of Wisconsin, Iowa, South Dakota, and North Dakota. The...

, as well from the left of center blogging community in Minnesota. The site features a code of ethics
Ethics
Ethics, also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality—that is, concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime, etc.Major branches of ethics include:...

that reads in part, "New Journalist Fellows should be honest, tireless, fair and courageous in gathering, reporting and interpreting information for the public."
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