Joining the Star Tribune blog team

aaronBrown_header

Today, I’ll be joining the state’s largest newspaper, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, as a blogger. I’ll be posting on the Strib’s “Your Voices” blog once or twice a week with some of my greatest hits from here at MinnesotaBrown and occasional original pieces written for a statewide audience. I’ll have a standing blog page called the Up North Report.

My first piece, “Five o’clock in the land of fate and fortune’s past,” is up now, and regular MinnesotaBrown readers will recognize the theme. An excerpt:

For much of the past decade the future of the Iron Range has been cast as a battle between high-paying extraction jobs and forces that seek to preserve the natural environment. This thinking isn’t just short sighted, it’s false. An enduring future in the extraction industry has eluded every mining town since humans first smelted crude metals. And putting the region in a Ziploc bag is not practical nor politically possible.

You want to know what really matters? A river that runs down the heart of America starts here. We are the sea route to the Orient. We hold Hill of Three Waters, long the spiritual and cultural center of the continent long before American settlement. Bridges and roads. Tracks. Mountains. Ax blades of granite deep beneath our feet. Our human accomplishments, in words or deed, are as important as they are permanent. How permanent are the things we do for the future of the Iron Range? Meeting aren’t permanent, but land, water and energy are …

You can read the full piece at StarTribune.com, which includes the reasons why we have both hope and limited time to make cultural and economic changes in northern Minnesota.

In summary, this Iron Range junkyard boy is writing for the metropolitan publication of record, and as my family taught me to say, that beats a kick in the head.

Comments

  1. Congratulations Aaron! Was very pleased to see this announcement on the STrib page today (less enthused by the addition of Brodkorb however…). Keep up the great work! I

  2. Great news. I hope you have a long run.

  3. Hopefully Aaron brings more neutrality and fairness in his commentary posted on the Red Star than Brian Vroman brought in writing for the Scenic Strange…but it sure has the makings of simply bringing coal to Newcastle..

  4. David Gray says

    I’d rather see Aaron at the Strib than Brodkorb. Would have been good to have a decent conservative at the Strib though,, Mitch Berg would have served them well.

    Congrats Aaron, remind the Strib that Minnesota is pretty evenly split, even if the Strib editorial board isn’t.

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