From a history of Skyway News, Downtown Journal & Southwest Journal: David Brauer, editor 2001-2005. In 2001, I'd been enjoying life as a national freelancer when Janis Hall and Terry Gahan approached me: Would I like to edit Skyway News? It was a ridiculous notion. I was a City Pages guy; Skyway News was the product of three-martini lunches, cheesy boosterism and the cheesecake of "Miss Skyway." No, no, they said. Turn Skyway News into a community paper for a place that doesn't know it's a community yet. Condo-dwellers had just started to arrive, and we grafted on the Southwest Journal model: indefatigable coverage of neighborhood meetings and ward-level City Hall coverage; arts coverage that didn't pander; voices of real people. For me, it was a great chance to influence local news again. We ended up winning a statewide public service award for exposing contractor influence on the Minneapolis Park Board; regularly scooped the competition on downtown development deals (projects first emerged at neighborhood association meetings); and generally raised havoc when we could get away with it, as countless angry phone calls from City Council Member Lisa Goodman attested. We indulged in April Fools issues, re-bannering as "Slyway News." We lampooned then-Gov. Jesse Ventura's paranoid tendencies with a front-pager that he'd ordered the skyway system dismantled. (We used a photo of a skyway being erected.)
The all-timer was an announcement that ABC was remaking "Three's Company" with a senior couple just in from the suburbs forced to share a downtown condo with a millennial. KSTP-TV was so excited Minnesota got national attention that it ran our joke as real news — no fact checking, even though KSTP is an ABC affiliate! Then the Star Tribune copied KSTP, also with no reporting. We'd parodied viral news before we knew what that was. It wasn't all fun though. I was especially proud of a profile we'd run on a downtown woman who was trans, who willingly told us her personal story and her harrowing life on the streets — the antithesis of the rosy "Miss Skyway" view of Downtown. But within a week, the reporter and I found ourselves sitting before a row of angry trans advocates, who told a couple of straight, white, cis guys we'd made our subject a target for violent trans- phobes, whether she knew it or not. It was a pointed education about priv- ilege and that feeling personally virtuous is no substitute for fully under- standing other realities. I learned so much about downtown, a place I'd always loved, but my great- est joy was giving journalists a chance to shine: Scott Russell, our most experienced reporter, got a bigger platform to explain and expose the city; Sarah McKenzie, who I literally hired because she'd fought for editorial independence as a Minnesota Daily editor against the Daily board (no shock Sarah became the Downtown Journal's longest-tenured editor); Sue Rich, a wonderful and supremely socially conscious managing editor; Robyn Repya White and Ellen Nigon, two of the hardest-working and nicest beat reporters an editor could hope to manage; Kevin Featherly, who pushed the envelope with me; Rich Ryan, our tireless photographer who created awesome images despite way too assignments.
And the paper wasn't just reporters. There were Marcia Roepke and Brian Nanista, who made the paper look exceptional; Marlo Johnson, who got the paper distributed with a smile we didn't always deserve; sales reps who got those condo developers to pony up; receptionists who often caught flack first while freeing us do our jobs. I'm so glad Janis and Terry asked. And that I said yes.
Happy Anniversary to me, the guy who loves April Fool’s Day so much that I turned the paper I edited into a giant lie-fest that sucked in KSTP, which didn’t fact-check a piece about a show allegedly appearing on its own network! (From a history of Southwest Journal & Downtown Journal #pouroneout)
