On a Tuesday evening in late January 2026, four editors gathered for a phone call to discuss something none of them had anticipated covering when they launched their publication five years earlier: federal immigration enforcement operations unfolding in their own neighborhood. Jessica Armbruster, Jay Boller, Em Cassel, and Keith Harris Racket's founding co-owners talked through what it meant to report on ICE activity in Minneapolis as residents watched their city transform around them.
"One of the pieces I did earlier this month was going to different restaurants that were acting as either gathering places for observers or gathering donations for the community or for folks who were in hiding," Em Cassel explained during the call. The story wasn't about the operations themselves that was the Star Tribune's territory, with its broader resources. Instead, Cassel was looking for "the secret third thing that nobody is covering."
That instinct finding the story between the headlines, serving the community rather than chasing national narratives has defined Racket since it launched digitally on August 18, 2021. What makes the publication particularly compelling isn't just its editorial philosophy, though. It's how Racket has cultivated a readership that doesn't merely consume journalism but actively shapes it.
A Vacuum That Became an Opportunity
The story of Racket begins with an ending. In October 2020, Star Tribune Media closed City Pages, declaring the long-running alternative weekly "economically unviable" amid the pandemic's upheaval. The publication had served Twin Cities readers since 1979, offering news, politics, food and drink, music, arts, culture, theater, and what its writers called "civic oddities and debate." It was irreverent, sometimes provocative, and always rooted in the specific texture of Minneapolis-St. Paul life.
For Armbruster, Boller, Cassel, and Harris all veterans of City Pages the closure left more than a professional gap. It left a civic one. "The Star Tribune is owned by a billionaire. The Pioneer Press is owned by a hedge fund. Racket is owned by four ex-City Pages editors who live in Minneapolis," as the publication's website would later put it.
Cassel, who had been City Pages's first female editor-in-chief, reflected on what ownership meant in a landscape where even union protection hadn't saved their former workplace. "We were in a union position at City Pages. We were in the Star Tribune's guild. That didn't save us at the end," she told Nieman Journalism Lab in August 2021. "I think what is interesting is that now people are like, well fine, fuck it, a union won't even protect us, we have to own the thing ourselves."
The Reader-Funded Model Takes Shape
Racket launched without a physical office, no newsprint costs, and initial funding drawn from the founders' own resources, supplemented by a discreet launch sponsorship from the Walker Art Center. Subscriptions came in three tiers: $5 per month or $50 annually for basic access, and $10 per month or $100 annually for extras like newsletters and community features.
No advertising meant no advertiser pressure. No corporate owner meant no bottom-line mandates from distant shareholders. But it also meant the publication's survival depended entirely on readers seeing enough value to open their wallets month after month.
That dependency, paradoxically, became a feature. When your revenue comes directly from readers rather than advertisers, your editorial compass points toward them naturally. Racket didn't just accept this reality it leaned into it, developing what became a distinctive reader-to-writer pipeline that would define the publication's character.
The Pipeline: How Readers Become Contributors
The phrase "reader-generated ideas define their coverage" appears across multiple accounts of Racket's editorial process. During the January 2026 call about covering immigration enforcement in Minneapolis, Cassel described their approach as rooted in community input: "We're looking for the secret third thing that nobody is covering." But finding that third thing requires knowing your community deeply and having community members who feel invested enough to point you toward stories.
This isn't a passive relationship. Racket's model asks something of its readers. The publication publishes what it calls "civic oddities" the strange, overlooked, or underreported corners of Twin Cities life that national outlets wouldn't touch and larger local papers might miss. Stories about union organizing efforts at small community-minded bars and restaurants. Coverage of megachurches' moneymaking events. Investigations into potential environmental pollution near Lake Superior. The closing of a beloved local McDonald's.
These are exactly the kinds of stories that emerge when readers and writers share a community. A reader who works at one of those restaurants, who attends that megachurch, who lives near that lake, becomes the first tip, the first source, and sometimes the first draft of a story.
As Jay Boller explained on The Journalism Salute podcast in April 2024, Racket's coverage emerges from this tight relationship between journalists and their audience. "Starting a writer-owned, reader-funded journalism business is challenging and not necessarily for everyone," Boller acknowledged. The model requires building trust, maintaining relevance, and consistently delivering stories that readers can't find elsewhere because those readers are, in effect, the publication's investors and its source base simultaneously.
Writing for the Community, With the Community
The alternative press tradition that Racket inherits is rooted in a specific moment the 1960s and 1970s, when publications like The Village Voice and, locally, City Pages and the Twin Cities Reader emerged as reactions to an establishment media that had become, as one observer put it, "establishment, formulaic, and bland." These weeklies were countercultural by design, speaking to readers who felt underserved by mainstream coverage.
Racket's founders have described wanting to continue that tradition while adapting it for a digital, reader-funded age. The name itself was chosen deliberately. "We wanted something that was an expression of us... We love the idea of making a racket," Cassel explained. The word captures both the noise-making function of alternative journalism and its willingness to disrupt comfortable narratives.
But there's a distinction between the alt-weeklies of the 1970s and Racket's approach. Those earlier publications relied on advertising entertainment ads, classifieds, personal listings that Craigslist and dating apps eventually destroyed. Racket's subscription-first model means the publication's financial survival depends on delivering consistent value to readers, not on maintaining relationships with advertisers.
In the summer of their second year, Racket published an unusually transparent letter of disclosure to subscribers, laying out everything about its operations: most popular articles, subscriber data, revenue breakdowns. It was the kind of transparency that would be impossible for an advertising-dependent publication beholden to both readers and ad partners. For Racket, it was simply good governance between workers and their community.
The Broader Movement
Racket isn't alone in this approach. The publication has been part of a rising tide of journalist-owned media startups relying on reader revenue rather than advertising. Local outlets like Block Club Chicago and The Colorado Sun have adopted similar models, as have collectives like Discourse, Brick House, and Study Hall.
Racket's editors have specifically cited Defector the sports-centric site founded by former Deadspin writers as a blueprint for what they're building. They even hired Alley, the same website developer behind Defector, to build their platform. The comparison is instructive: Defector succeeded by offering sports coverage with a strong editorial voice, written for readers who wanted something different from the sanitized, SEO-optimized content that dominated major sports sites.
Racket applies the same logic to Twin Cities coverage. The publication isn't trying to compete with the Star Tribune on scope or resources. It's offering something different: in-depth, irreverent, community-rooted journalism that serves readers who feel underserved by mainstream local coverage.
What This Means for MyPostsNet Readers
For those researching how community publishing works in practice, Racket offers a compelling case study. The publication demonstrates that reader-funded journalism isn't just a financial model it's an editorial philosophy. When your survival depends on readers rather than advertisers, you develop different instincts about what stories matter and how to tell them.
The reader-to-writer pipeline at Racket didn't emerge from a formal program or structured system. It grew organically from a publication that listens to its community, covers stories with and for that community, and treats readers as partners rather than passive consumers. That approach creates loyalty, generates story leads, and eventually produces contributors who understand the publication's voice because they've been reading it for years.
This matters for anyone thinking about community publishing, content sharing platforms, or local journalism sustainability. The pipeline works because the foundation is real: genuine coverage of genuine community concerns, delivered consistently, without the editorial compromises that advertising dependency forces.
The Story Between the Headlines
Back on that January 2026 call, as the Racket editors discussed covering immigration enforcement in Minneapolis, Em Cassel described her approach to scene reporting visiting restaurants that had become gathering places for community resistance, talking to people about what they were witnessing in their daily lives. "I was just stopping in and doing some scene reporting and interviews about what is actually going on here. What is the role of a restaurant in this?"
That question what's the role of a restaurant, a bar, a café, a neighborhood barbershop in a community crisis? is exactly the kind of story that mainstream outlets miss and that reader-funded publications like Racket are built to find. It requires being embedded in a community, having readers who trust you enough to share what they're seeing, and having the editorial freedom to pursue stories that don't have obvious national implications but matter enormously to local readers.
Racket's model shows that building an audience isn't just about producing good content. It's about building relationships, creating investment, and developing a publication that readers feel ownership over. The reader-to-writer pipeline works because both sides have skin in the game: readers fund the publication, and the publication serves readers. When that relationship is genuine, the content improves, the audience grows, and the journalism becomes something that couldn't exist any other way.
Where to Read Further
To understand Racket's origins and editorial philosophy, Nieman Journalism Lab's 2021 profile offers the publication's own account of why it chose a reader-funded, writer-owned model and how it drew inspiration from Defector and other journalist-owned startups.
For a deeper look at the publication's business operations and transparency practices, Twin Cities Business's 2023 feature "Making the Racket" examines how the publication handles subscriber relationships, disclosure practices, and the economics of alt-weekly journalism in the digital age.
To hear directly from one of the founders about both his journalism origins and the challenges of running a reader-funded outlet, The Journalism Salute podcast episode with Jay Boller covers his career trajectory, Racket's origin story, and examples of the publication's distinctive coverage approach.