When ICE came to Minneapolis, readers turned to The Minnesota Star Tribune’s free live blog

When Minneapolis became ground zero for the Trump administration’s unprecedented federal immigration crackdown, its local news institutions were, once again, on the front lines of a global story. And just as Minnesota’s nonprofits and public radio station punched above their audience weight with their reporting, so too did its local newspapers.

The flagship Minnesota Star Tribune saw almost 18 million visits in January, which is about 10 million more than December and a 138% increase, according to data Nieman Lab drew from Similarweb. That’s “about double” the Star Tribune’s usual traffic in January, vice president for communications and brand marketing Chris Iles told me. “The only time we’ve seen more traffic was in 2020 when we lifted paywalls during the pandemic and murder of George Floyd,” he said.

The Star Tribune didn’t lift its paywall entirely this time, but it did launch an unpaywalled live blog “as a form of public service journalism,” and allowed subscribers unlimited gift articles. The live blog was the newspaper’s top traffic driver in January, Iles said, and that month’s total gifted articles was double the 2025 monthly average. Its second most-read story identified the first of two American citizens killed by federal agents, and its third most-read story reported that the ICE agent who shot Renee Good had been dragged by a car in an earlier incident.

While the live blog was free to access, it may also have played a role in converting new subscribers; “we found that the live blog was a top touchpoint among subscribers that joined in January,” Iles said. The Star Tribune “nearly doubled” its subscription rate in January compared to the 2025 monthly average; 78% of those were annual subscriptions.

The Star Tribune and its in-house agency Foundry North went on to launch a brand campaign, “Because the world is watching.” The campaign positioned the Star Tribune “not just as a news source for Minnesotans, but as a critical window for the world to understand potential national and global implications” of Operation Metro Surge. The world really was watching; in January, traffic from outside Minnesota accounted for 61% of total sessions, Iles said, 177% higher than the 2025 monthly average. (Meanwhile, the Star Tribune’s Local News Fund received donations from 44 of 50 U.S. states.) At the same time, in-state traffic was 37% higher than the 2025 monthly average. The Star Tribune’s biggest sources of non-direct traffic in January were Google Search and Google Discover.

It’s worth noting audience bumps weren’t limited to Minneapolis’ local paper of record. TwinCities.com, the digital presence of the Alden-owned Pioneer Press, saw about 638,000 more visits in January compared to December, about a 39% jump and one of the biggest upticks in visits month-over-month of any local newspaper.

First, there’s The Cornell Daily Sun, the eponymous university’s independent student newspaper (while the Sun is still a for-profit newspaper, many other student publications are nonprofits these days; Hanaa’ took a look at standout examples of recent audience growth among nonprofit student media). In February, the Sun saw almost 117,000 more visits than in January, about a 44% uptick. Editor-in-chief Sophia Dasser attributed that jump to a deliberate foray into covering campus stories with a national angle.

“The February jump was driven pretty cleanly by two stories, both tied to Cornell’s appearance in national political coverage,” Dasser said. Those articles: “Hegseth Moves to Ban Tuition Aid for Military Members Seeking Graduate Education at Cornell, Top Universities” (58,800 visits) and “Epstein Corresponded With Cornell Undergraduate, Son of Powerful Law Firm Chairman” (46,100 visits). Those stories remain the Sun’s top two performers year-to-date. Google was an important referrer for the Sun, and Dasser noted that the newspaper’s reporting surfaced prominently in “Epstein Cornell” searches.

February happens to be editorial board election season for the Sun, Dasser said, and several incoming editors, including her, “were eager to broaden the paper’s coverage in a more national direction and so this kind of coverage was the product of that.” (She also pointed out that half of January falls during Cornell’s winter break, when the Sun has a lighter publishing cadence, so a portion of the month-over-month delta is likely “structural.”)

MyRGV.com, the online presence covering the Rio Grande Valley for AIM Media Texas newspapers The Monitor, Valley Morning Star, and The Brownsville Herald, saw more dramatic traffic spikes in February; its site received about 328,000 more visits in February than in January, a 283% increase, and its traffic grew another 32% in March. But digital content manager Emily D’Gyves told me the uptick has been a bit of a mystery to the team.

One story that wildly overperformed was “Public housing authorities requiring tenants prove legal residency” — D’Gyves said that story garnered about 95,000 users, when its stories typically see somewhere between 1,000 and 15,000 users, and other popular stories from the month had less than 25,000 users. In March, the same thing happened with two other stories: “DMV quietly passes legal status rule for vehicle registration, renewal” (almost 269,000 users) and “At 102, Clarence Hicks of Pharr reflects on being among the 45K remaining WWII survivors” (about 129,000 users). On the DMV story, its analytics platform Microsoft Clarity registered major upticks in traffic from states including California, Arizona, and New York. “We thought maybe the topic of immigration created an uptick in the analytics, but we’ve been covering that beat heavily before those stories blew up,” D’Gyves said. “Honestly, we weren’t really doing anything different.” The traffic influx lasted for about three weeks, and was “genuinely something we hadn’t seen before!”

D’Gyves has also noticed “strange, excessive drops” in traffic some months, and has heard similar reports from other digital media peers in Texas. Her best guess is these could be AI-related shifts, as the news org is starting to see users coming from ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot.

When I asked Nick Falsone, editor of Pennsylvania’s lehighvalleylive.com, about its traffic uptick in March, he also pointed to AI playing a role — but on the production side.

In March, Lehigh Valley Live had about 514,000 more visits compared to February, about a 53% increase. “March was a good month for us, buoyed by a couple of strategic changes we’ve made,” Falsone said. First, the team has started coordinating more closely with its PennLive colleagues on coverage with statewide relevance. Second, though, they’ve been using Advance Local’s in-house AI tools, which Falsone said “have enhanced our journalists’ ability to provide more comprehensive local coverage, including community news, traffic and weather updates, concert announcements, business openings and more.” Specifically, they “streamline the process of gathering data for stories,” which he said has increased the outlet’s local coverage while “freeing up our reporters to spend more time in the community.” Reporters and editors are still ultimately responsible for everything Lehigh Valley Live publishes, he added.

(It’s also worth noting Lehigh Valley Live is an Advance Local publication, and Josh has written a bunch about why Advance Local outlets tend to punch above their weight when it comes to digital audience. Unfortunately, it appears the digital-savvy chain is not just serving that audience journalism — this week, Popular Information reported that Advance Local has published mountains of gambling slop since 2022.)