It’s not easy to tease a lot of insight out of Star Tribune CEO/publisher Steve Grove’s Tuesday announcement that the paper was embarking on another round of headcount reductions, other than that the paper is not immune from the trends weighing on most media.

In a letter to staff, Grove announced job cuts of 15%, including cuts in the newsroom, which excluded staffers who gather news. The affected newsroom categories are team leaders, page designers, copy editors, and news assistants. (There is a supposition that the org is going to be leaning into AI to supplant some of these functions.) Grove termed the cuts as an ongoing restructuring in pursuit of a more modern, nimble business, but it’s difficult, just into year four of his tenure, to not view it as retrenchment. (Grove was not available for interviews around the news.)

Star Tribune Newspaper Guild co-chair Jeff Day, in an interview, explained the union is currently awaiting access to the newspaper’s financials, a prerequisite for layoffs. The paper must initially offer buyouts to affected work groups, but given the newspaper completed a round of buyouts in 2025, it’s not clear how much zeal remains for them in its workforce. Layoffs, according to Day, must be done strictly according to seniority within specialties, but in many cases an entire work group (news assistants) is slated for elimination.

Grove will now have presided over headcount reductions at the business of roughly 40%, though the newsroom will have dropped proportionately less, from approximately 230 to 175, when the cuts are completed. (And some layoffs and buyouts were balanced by new hires.)

Grove’s tenure has been nothing if not dynamic. In taking over the business, he launched a variety of strategic and branding initiatives to stabilize and grow: the implementation of a statewide coverage strategy for a newspaper that had gradually pulled back into a metro-area focus; an emphasis on paid specialty content areas like Strib Varsity (high school sports); signature events (North Star Summit); and a focus on extracting donations from the region’s strong philanthropic base.

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Within his letter, Grove indicated that the paper’s benevolent owner, Glen Taylor—who keeps any profits within the business and provided a capital infusion when Grove took the helm—will explore turning the Star Tribune into a charitable foundation, which would have theoretical tax benefits. Given the newspaper is marginally profitable, such a move offers more practical upside in making the Star Tribune a more seamless recipient for foundation largesse, while protecting it from ownership upheaval.

The media business writ large is not healthy. From television to streaming to news to entertainment to radio, most legacy media businesses and many recent web startups are shrinking economic engines. In 2012, the Star Tribune reported daily circulation of 300,000 and Sunday circulation of 519,000. The paper’s most recent audited circulation data showed weekday circulation of around 160,000 and Sunday circ of 190,000. (Weekday/Sunday circulation numbers are converging because digital subscriptions are all 24/7.) The business is privately held, so its economics beyond circulation are opaque.

The Strib recently saw digital circulation pass print, but the business’ overall market penetration continues to decline, in line with other newspapers. Prior to the cuts, the paper was neck and neck with the largest regional newspapers in the country in newsroom headcount (LA, Boston, Houston, Philly).

Grove, during his tenure, has made major changes to the paper’s leadership structure, added staffing in key areas, and hired a new editor-in-chief. He is said to be more hands-on on content topics than his predecessor. “We believe in the sincerity of his vision,” says Day. “But it’s the tactics we’re not sure of.”

Day said the timing of the cuts, weeks after the paper was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the Annunciation shootings and an exhausting winter covering Operation Metro Surge, has been “extremely painful and personal” for the newsroom.

Widely bandied-about statistics indicate that less than 20% of the adult population is willing to pay for news, relying on social media feeds and the like to stay informed. Given a bit less than half of the Star Tribune’s subscribers still pay for a print product that is magnitudes more profitable than digital subscriptions, the paper will likely face further margin and revenue erosion as those readers leave.

The question for the Strib is, where is the bottom? Grove has made many inevitable hard choices, but it’s not yet evident if much besides his cost-cutting initiatives has moved the economic needle. The Star Tribune maintains an outsize heft relative to market size due to the high literacy levels and historic sense of shared community in the Twin Cities. It may be that its bottom is higher than in larger cities like Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Dallas, or San Francisco, whose newspapers fell faster and harder past the Strib.

But until the Strib can at least level off, the readers who value it must manage the unnerving fear that the bottom is not yet in sight.