When the World is Watching
Minnesota Star Tribune CEO Steve Grove on the ICE raids that put Minnesota at the centre of the world's news agenda, and the AI misinformation that falsely named him as a shooter.
Steve Grove, CEO of The Minnesota Star Tribune spoke at a WAN-IFRA Innovate Local webinar hosted by Cecilia Campbell, programme editor, Malmö, Sweden.
In December last year, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement launched Operation Metro Search in Minneapolis. Within weeks, Minnesota became the most-watched place in America. The Minnesota Star Tribune was already there.
“We realised pretty quickly it’s a very visual story,” says Steve Grove, CEO and publisher of the Star Tribune, speaking at a WAN-IFRA webinar hosted by Cecilia Campbell. “What took place in the streets of our Twin Cities was probably the most documented crisis in American history up to this point.”
Grove, a former Google and YouTube executive who returned to Minnesota eight years ago, took over the Star Tribune four years earlier. The newsroom had already covered George Floyd’s murder and the civil unrest that followed. The Floyd coverage won a Pulitzer.
Safety First
Before the ICE raids escalated, editor Kathleen Hennessey had commissioned crisis training. A national safety firm ran a two-day workshop covering field protocol, navigating tear gas, PPE, and evacuation procedures. Basic hygiene for reporting in hostile environments.
“Journalism today doesn’t just mean in the streets, it means online,” Grove says. The newsroom ran a parallel upgrade of its cybersecurity. Doxxing and online harassment are not just risks for national political journalists. They arrive at local newsrooms too, particularly in a polarised coverage environment.
When Alex Pratt was shot on a Saturday, Grove says, “you just had instantly a dozen reporters volunteering to come in.” Outside normal working hours. No hesitation.
The Misinformation Problem
Citizen documentation drove the story. Thousands of bystanders filmed events in real time.
In one case, footage showed a masked ICE agent involved in a shooting. Someone took a still from the video, uploaded it to Grok, the AI tool on X, and asked it to digitally reconstruct the face behind the mask. The AI complied. The generated image was then run through a reverse image search, which returned a match: a gun shop owner in Missouri named Steve Grove.
Within hours, misinformation had linked the Star Tribune’s own publisher to the shooting.
“Suddenly, there was this rumour that Steve Grove had shot Renée Good,” he says. “Which is preposterous, of course.”
The Star Tribune’s reporters eventually identified the real shooter and published the story. By then, the misinformation had spread further than the correction.
The newsroom also used AI verification tools to identify fake footage. When a genuine video of Pratt emerged weeks after his shooting, someone created an AI-generated version and circulated both simultaneously. The product and news teams worked together to debunk it. “We’ve invested in the newsroom,” Grove says. “That’s what it takes.”
The Commercial Response
The Star Tribune made all ICE-related coverage free. Subscriptions went up anyway.
“People would land on a page that they didn’t have to pay to get to, and then they would subscribe,” Grove says. They did it because they believed in journalism. Donations arrived from 45 US states. The newsroom was already 40 weeks into a consecutive streak of digital subscription growth.
The Star Tribune launched a campaign titled “Because the World is Watching.” They lifted the cap on gift articles, launched a family subscription allowing four email logins per account, and wrapped the set under a brand message that answered the obvious question: Why pay attention to a paper in Minnesota? “The answer is, well, the world’s watching Minnesota,” Grove says.
Print subscribers are declining at around 20 per cent year-on-year. Digital is growing, but the gap is real. Philanthropy is now a formal channel, startribune.com/donate has been running for some time, and the crisis has significantly accelerated inbound giving.
The Investigative Follow-up
Once the ICE operation scaled back, the Star Tribune launched a standalone investigative team, a structural change Grove had been working toward. Their first major project is the Data Detention Project, a collaboration with multiple local newsrooms attempting to identify who was among the 4,000 people ICE claimed to have arrested.
That means court filings. Data journalism. Shoe leather. The kind of reporting that takes months and doesn’t trend on social media.
“A big story happens, then how do you dig into precisely what took place and make sense of it for your readers?” Grove says. “That’s been the journey we’ve been on.”
What Other Publishers Should Take From This
Grove’s message to local publishers was direct: you never know when a crisis will hit your community, so preparation has to happen in the quiet moments. Training, infrastructure, philanthropy mechanisms, these need to be in place before the story breaks, not after.
He also challenged the instinct to simply report and move on. “When these crises hit, you can’t be shy about asking for help. It’s okay to campaign for local news when a crisis hits.”
Minnesota has structural advantages, great statewide pride, a dense local news ecosystem, and an owner willing to invest. Not every local newsroom has those conditions. But across all of them, the same question applies: when the big story breaks, is the infrastructure there to meet it?
