Star Tribune
Meet the St. Paul journalist dedicated to deeply covering communities of color
When it was announced last month that former Star Tribune and Minnesota Public Radio reporter Mukhtar Ibrahim was stepping down as CEO and publisher of the Sahan Journal, the news organization he founded in 2019, Eye On St. Paul reached out.
Ibrahim, a University of Minnesota journalism graduate and onetime teammate of the Eye’s at the Star Tribune, launched Sahan Journal to give Twin Cities communities of color deeper and more dedicated coverage. In just five years, the website has become a major player among Twin Cities news media. Now, he says, it’s time for another big change. This interview was edited for length.
Q: Where’s home?
A: I live in Eagan, but I call St. Paul my hometown. I’ve always lived in St. Paul, since [the family] came to the U.S. in 2005. I grew up near downtown, Mt. Airy. My sisters live there still.
Q: Why were you drawn to journalism?
A: I think it goes back to when I was growing up. My parents were news consumers. They used to listen to the BBC Somali, which was broadcasting from London. People like my dad fled from civil war in Somalia and went to Ethiopia, then Kenya, They were just trying to stay in the know about current affairs in the country.
I came here when I was 17. And I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do. I wanted to major in biochemistry at the U, but that’s when [I thought], “OK, what am I really doing here?” And that’s when I shifted my major from biochemistry to journalism. [Former Star Tribune reporter Chris] Ison was there at the time, and I just felt it was a passion.
Q: When did you graduate from the U?
A: 2011.
Q: And when did you go to work for the Star Tribune?
A: 2018.
Q: What did you do in between?
A: I was at MPR.
Q: What brought you to the Star Tribune from MPR?
A: When I came to the Star Tribune, I’d done my master’s at Columbia [University]. And I just wanted to use those skills. I did data analysis. I did the investigative track at journalism school and I wanted to put those skills to use. And I thought the paper was a good place.
Q: Were there stories that you wished you were doing that you weren’t able to do?
A: No. I had a good beat. I was covering Minneapolis City Hall. But I just wanted more stories from my community, more news.
Q: When did you get the idea for Sahan Journal?
A: I had this idea for a while. Even when I was applying for a Bush Foundation fellowship in 2016, I wanted to advance my journalism skills and I wanted to go to Columbia and come back and do something with people of color. But I had no idea where to start.
Sahan Journal was to be like MPR, or MinnPost, that kind of journalism, but be more laser-focused on the communities [of color]. Keeping the stories of those communities on the front page every day and not just when there’s a triple shooting in the neighborhood.
Our stories are published at Star Tribune, at MPR. What we are doing is classic journalism but with a different lens.
Q: Have you been surprised at how successful it’s been?
A: Yes.
Q: Why?
A: My immediate goal when I left Star Tribune in 2019 was to do good journalism for the community. And then I realized the success [laughs]. That just really consumed me, the business side of the operation. Trying to get the community to support it, with $10 or $15 [donations]. Now we have a 21 to 22 person newsroom, one of the largest newsrooms in the state.
Q: What has surprised you?
A: [long pause] How quickly we established ourselves in the market, providing something different — deep coverage of communities of color. And the quickness of that growth is something I am so grateful for.
Q: Who is your audience?
A: We are trying to accomplish different things. We want to inform diverse communities about things going on in their community, in their neighborhoods. Ultimately, that will result in them being more significantly engaged in the issues that affect them. The other part is for the white community to better understand the issues of their neighbors, their friends, their colleagues. That can lead to better understanding.
Q: So why get out?
A: I want to make space for someone else to come in and lead the transition and become a leader. I want to cultivate more leaders in the community who can step in. Now we are at a point where our feet are strong. We have amazing staff. We have good funding. We have all the infrastructure. And I just felt this was the right time to make that transition.
Q: I got the impression that some of this was a nod to your family.
A: I am the father of four kids [ages 9, 8, 5 and 4 months]. As you know, I’ve been doing this through the pandemic. Uprisings. Fundraising. All of that just took me further and further away from family life. I just want to shift the focus a little bit.
At the same time, I am working on an MBA at [the U’s] Carlson School of Management. And I want to see what’s next.
ZUMBRO RIVER VALLEY, MINN. – From his combine on an October afternoon, harvesting dried-out soybeans the color of dust, Martin Larsen points to a hillside where his ancestors from Scandinavia homesteaded.
History might be happening again on the Larsen farm.
Last year, on this plot of land along the Zumbro River, the 43-year-old farmer from Byron grew oats. Not oats for hogs or cows. But oats for humans. He hauled the oats to a miller across the state line into Iowa. A previous year, Larsen even had a contract with Oatly, the trendy Swedish maker of milk alternatives.
Something of an oat renaissance has been occurring down in the fields west of the Mississippi River. During winters, Larsen — through his job with the Olmsted County Soil and Water Conservation District — evangelized to fellow farmers on the humble small grain.
His friends and neighbors were listening. As of this fall, over 60 farmers, covering 6,000 acres across southern Minnesota, have joined Larsen’s informal coalition to grow food-grade oats. They call themselves the “oat mafia.”
Star of breakfast food, children’s books and, increasingly, those nondairy lattes, oats are easier on the environment, requiring less nitrogen than corn, which means a lot in the karst-rich hill country of southeastern Minnesota, where the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has tasked state officials with cleaning up drinking water.
“Nitrates come from this,” said Larsen, driving his gray Gleaner combine on a patch of soybeans beneath a hillock just beyond the suburban sprawl of northwest Rochester on a recent warm Friday afternoon. “I’m not going to beat around the bush anymore. That’s what the data says.”
But as the oat mafia looks to the future, they’re struggling with a basic marketing question: Who will actually buy these oats they’re growing?
Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan and her daughter were among the throngs Friday as President Joe Biden delivered the apology that many Indigenous Americans thought would never come.
“I think he really said the things that people have been waiting to hear for generations, acknowledged just the horror and trauma of literally having our children stolen from our communities,” said Flanagan, a member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe. “It’s a powerful first step towards healing.”
Hundreds of boarding schools operated in the 19th and 20th centuries, separating Indigenous children from their families and forcing them to assimilate to European ways. Many children were abused, and at least 973 died, according to a report from the U.S. Department of the Interior.
Other Minnesotans reacted similarly to Flanagan, saying they welcomed the apology but that additional action is needed to help Indigenous people move forward.
Anton Treuer, a professor of Ojibwe at Bemidji State University, wrote in a newsletter that the apology was “a welcome first step on the journey to healing.”
“There is no way to truly right historical injustices for the children buried at Carlisle, Haskell, and other schools, but these words set a new tone for the country and will help heal the anguish so many Natives have carried for so long,” Treuer wrote. “It gives me hope that we can come together to reconcile and heal our troubled nation.”
Sen. Mary Kunesh, DFL-New Brighton, the first Indigenous woman to serve in the state Senate, called Biden’s apology encouraging.
“This recognition of past wrongdoings is an important step towards healing relationships between the United States and the sovereign nations affected by these past systems,” Kunesh said in a statement. “This dark period of American history must be remembered and taught.”
“I have done everything in my power to remedy this situation, and it continues to get more and more violent by the day,” Moturi wrote. “There have been numerous times when I’ve seen Sawchak outside and contacted law enforcement, and there was no response. I am not confident in the pursuit of Sawchak given that Sawchak attacked me, MPD officers had John detained, and despite an HRO and multiple warrants — they still let him go.”
On Friday, five City Council members sent a letter to Mayor Jacob Frey and Police Chief Brian O’Hara expressing their “utter horror at MPD’s failure to protect a Minneapolis resident from a clear, persistent and amply reported threat posed by his neighbor.”
Council Members Andrea Jenkins, Elliott Payne, Aisha Chughtai, Jason Chavez and Robin Wonsley went on to allege that police had failed to submit reports to the County Attorney’s Office despite threats being made with weapons, and at times while Sawchak screamed racial slurs. Sawchak is white and Moturi is Black.
The council members also contend in their letter that the MPD told the County Attorney’s Office that police did not intend to execute the warrant for “reasons of officer safety.”
At a Friday afternoon news conference at MPD’s Fifth Precinct, O’Hara said police had been working to arrest Sawchak since at least April, but “no Minneapolis police officers have had in-person contact with that suspect since the victim in this case has been calling us.” The chief pointed out that Sawchak is mentally ill, has guns and refuses to cooperate “in the dozens of times that police officers have responded to the residence.”
O’Hara put aside the option to carry out “a high-risk warrant based on these factors [and] the likelihood of an armed, violent confrontation where we may have to use deadly force with the suspect.” The preference, he said, was to arrest Sawchak outside his home, but “in this case, this suspect is a recluse and does not come out of the house.”
