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.
“DHS and our state and federal partners have seen evidence that kickbacks are happening in Minnesota,” Inspector General Kulani Moti said in a statement. “That’s why we brought an anti-kickback proposal to the Minnesota Legislature last session. We will continue to work with the Legislature next session on ways to strengthen the integrity of our public programs.”
Nuway Alliance, one of the state’s largest nonprofit substance use disorder treatment providers, pays up to $700 a month for someone’s housing while they are in intensive outpatient treatment, the organization’s website states. The site lists dozens of sober housing programs clients can choose from.
Nuway leaders said they got an inquiry from the government about two and a half years ago indicating they are conducting a civil investigation into the housing model.
But officials with the nonprofit said in an email they believe what they are doing is legal and clients need it. More than 600 people are using their assistance to stay in recovery residences, Nuway officials stated. They said having a safe, supportive place to stay is particularly important for the vulnerable people they serve, more than half of whom reported being homeless in the six months before they started treatment.
Health plans knew about, approved and even lauded their program, Nuway leaders said, noting that health insurer UCare even gave it an award.
“The state of Minnesota has been fully aware of our program for a decade,” the organization said. “Since payors are fully aware of, and support the program, we struggle to see how anyone could argue it is improper, let alone fraudulent.”
Mounds View, the first Minnesota city to require homeowners to discharge racist language buried in deeds before they sell their homes, is celebrating a milestone: at least 100 homeowners have completed the process.
Officials say discharging the language is a symbolic step, but an important one.
“How could we call ourselves an inclusive community with the words ‘This home shall not be sold to a non-white person’ buried in the deeds?” Mayor Zach Lindstrom said at the state of the city address Monday.
Racially restrictive covenants, found in deeds around the Twin Cities and Minnesota, were legally enforceable tools of racial segregation for the first half of the 20th century. They barred homes’ sale to, and sometimes even occupancy by, anyone who wasn’t white until 1948, when they became unenforceable. Mapping Prejudice, a University of Minnesota research project uncovering these covenants, has found more than 33,000 of them in Minnesota, including more than 500 in Mounds View.
Many local cities have partnered with Just Deeds, a coalition that helps cities and their residents learn about and discharge covenants. In 2019, the Legislature passed a law allowing homeowners to add language to their deeds that discharges racist covenants but doesn’t erase them from the record. Earlier this year, Mounds View was the first to pass an ordinance requiring it. The city is also helping residents navigate the process.
Just because these covenants are no longer enforceable doesn’t mean they haven’t had long-lasting consequences, Kirsten Delegard, Mapping Prejudice project director, said at a Mounds View City Council meeting this summer: Minneapolis homes with racial covenants are worth 15% more than those without, she said. And neighborhoods with covenants remain the whitest parts of the Twin Cities.
Mounds View residents Rene and Steven Johnson were troubled to learn from Mapping Prejudice that their house, and many homes in their neighborhood, had racially restrictive covenants on them. It took some effort, including a trip to the Ramsey County Recorder’s Office, to find the document, which not only contained race restrictions but barred unmarried couples from owning the home.
The couple got their covenant discharged, and educated the city about the process, Rene Johnson said. That helped lead to the ordinance requiring covenants to be discharged before sale.
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?
