Star Tribune Unveils Expanded “News In Education” Program to Bring Free Digital News Access to All Minnesota Schools

Ambitious Initiative Will Provide
100% Digital Access to Minnesota Students—100% Free

MINNEAPOLIS—Nov. 2, 2020—On the eve of the 2020 election, Star Tribune Media Co., Minnesota’s largest media company, today unveiled a broader, more ambitious version of its “News in Education” program to bring free access to the Star Tribune to all Minnesota school districts. The program underscores the importance of news literacy among young and diverse audiences and builds on a longstanding program that today serves some 300 schools statewide.

Partially funded by a grant from the Google News Initiative, the Star Tribune News in Education program will provide completely free, one-click access to all Star Tribune content to students, teachers, and administrators through their school’s technology infrastructure.

The Star Tribune digital team will work with school technology teams to integrate Star Tribune digital access with each district’s education platforms such as Google Classroom, ClassLink, Blackboard and others. In its pilot implementation, the Star Tribune deployed a solution in the Hopkins (Minn.) School District using the market-leading single sign-on platform ClassLink. To date, forty other districts have requested access, and Star Tribune aims to have access available to all school districts that request it by the end of the 2021-22 school year.

“Between the disruptions of a global pandemic, growing civil unrest, and ever-greater interest among young people in local government and policy decisions, teachers have made it clear that schools can benefit by invigorating their curricula with trustworthy news and current events information,” said Ken Lawrence, Star Tribune education audience development manager. “Again and again, educators told us access was one of the biggest barriers to integrating news into their teaching. We’re very proud to roll out this expanded version of News in Education to provide the work of Minnesota’s largest newsroom to schools across the state easily and at no cost. The opportunity to raise levels of news literacy in the next generation is a critical step to creating an informed citizenry.”

School administrators interested in participating in the Star Tribune News in Education program can reach out directly to ken.lawrence@startribune.com or call 612-916-1173.

About Star Tribune Media Company
Star Tribune Media Company LLC is a locally owned, award-winning media company serving Minnesota and the upper Midwest. With the most-visited local news website, the third-largest Sunday and sixth-largest daily circulation metro print newspaper in the U.S., a range of home-delivered advertising solutions, and a growing portfolio of events, Star Tribune reaches more consumers than any other Minnesota media brand. For more information, visit www.startribunecompany.com

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Media contact:
Steve Yaeger
612-673-4256 (office)
651-357-3036 (mobile)
steve.yaeger@startribune.com