How Minnesota's oldest Black-owned newspaper is covering the Chauvin trial

Interest in the Derek Chauvin trial is giving new reach to the state's oldest Black-owned newspaper.

What's happening: "People are reading us from all over the country," Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder community editor Mel Reeves told Torey.

What they're doing: Reeves relies on a team of contributors to produce a mix of daily recaps, analysis and explanatory journalism.

• Recent stories range from community reaction to analysis of the racial dynamics at play in the jury selection. Local experts, including former Hennepin County chief public defender Mary Moriarty, are breaking down legal issues.

What they're saying: Reeves, who is both an activist and a journalist, told Torey his coverage goal is to "tell the unvarnished truth as best we can," often through a Black and progressive lens.

• "Black people and people of color who are experiencing oppression and discrimination, we’re going to help them get free of it and expose that as much as we can."

Fun fact: The Spokesman-Recorder, launched as two separate editions in August 1934, is also the state's longest-running Black-owned business, as KARE11 reported.

• Publisher Tracey Williams-Dillard is the granddaughter of founder Cecil Newman.
• She keeps the typewriter he used to write his stories in the paper's lobby.

This story first appeared in the Axios Twin Cities newsletter, designed to help readers get smarter, faster on the most consequential news unfolding in their own backyard.

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