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Minnesota Monthly’s Recipe for Success
A brief look at MMPA’s First Magazine of the Year
by Terry Monahan
What makes a magazine the best?
From its beginnings in 1967 as a program guide for the brand-new Minnesota Public Radio, to its recognition last November as the MMPA’s first Magazine of the Year, Minnesota Monthly has declined to sit on its laurels.
“We keep thinking about how to do this better,” says senior editor Tim Gihring, a staffer since 2000 at Greenspring Media Group, the magazine’s parent company. “I think the award is proof that we are doing our best work here, that people do like to read good writing—and from my point of view, longer-form writing—analysis and perspective on Minnesota culture.”
Publisher Steve Fox agrees, offering special credit to the people behind the publication. “It is gratifying to have the recognition from your peers for a job well done,” he says, “and it is a further tribute that the Magazine of the Year Award encompasses all of our operations and all of our team members. Across the board, everyone here takes a great deal of pride in what we produce—not that we always get it right, but we are always striving to do our best.
“Excellence requires talent, constant recognition and reinforcement of good results, and a climate conducive to creativity,” he continues. “At the end of the day, the best people just give a damn.”
The Magazine of the Year Award, bestowed for the first time at the 14th Annual Minnesota Publishing Excellence Awards Gala last November, is based on a system of points accumulated over the history of the MMPA’s Excellence Awards competition, launched in 1996.
Greenspring began printing a seal in recognition of the Magazine of the Year award on the December cover of Minnesota Monthly and the magazine’s home page.
