Kathy Maguson: Co-Publisher of Minnesota Womens Press This interview was conducted in the newspaper's Raymond Avenue office

in St. Paul on Jan. 20, 2011. Jon Collins: Well, thank you so much for sitting down to talk to me too, I appreciate it. Kathy Magnuson: Youre welcome. Collins: Well I guess can you start telling me a little bit about your background? Magnuson: Its not in journalism. Its not even in communications. My undergrad degree is in psychology. My Masters is in education. And I had a lot of, some friends in college who were studying business and I just didnt understand that at all, like how boring would that be? So Im running a communications business now, how did that happen? I got involved with community journalism thinking geographically a community journalism with a community newspaper, the Park Bugle in St. Paul because I lived in the neighborhood and I was invested in the neighborhood and I cared about the publication. And so started doing some ad sales and some business management there and one day our editor said, Ive an idea. We need to talk. And her idea was she was leaving her role as editor to start up a new newspaper. About, by, for, and about women and she said, I want you to be on my team. So a group of about six of us worked for about a year. And we thought about what would we call it? How would it be printed? Who would do It, how would it be distributed. How do we pay for this thing? Whats the business model? What would it look like? And did all our homework, rounded up some investors and about a year later we published the first issue. And were kind of astounded that, wow, it happened. We really did this. Collins: That first year, was that all-volunteer essentially? Magnuson: Yes. Collins: Thats interesting, thats such a distinction from non-community journalism I guess I should say. More mainstream journalism. Magnuson: It wasnt where we came in with a big chunk of money and got a flashy office and did big marketing plan. It was very grassroots. In fact, philosophically when we went out to look for investors, philosophically we wanted to have, like, hundreds or thousands of people invest $5 or $50 and legally that was just not a real workable option. And thats a little bit the pattern of our history of having an idea or having a philosophy and bumping up against the world and saying, well, how do we modify that? How do we be true to our values and make it work in the world? So what happened was we became a sub s corp where we could have up to, I think, 35 investors. But because we were limited in the

number of investors, had to have a minimum amount that people could invest to raise the capital we needed. So that was our compromise. But wanted broad investment in ownership beyond financial. But philosophically and from an interest point of view as well. Did that answer your question? Ive forgotten what you asked. Collins: When the group of you was working on this, what was the reason that you wanted to fill this area of coverage? Magnuson: Good question. So why did we think anybody would be interested in this and why were we interested? This was the early 80s and a lot of things were happening for women locally and nationally and there was a real perception and reality that womens stories werent being told. So this was going to be a platform for womens stories and women telling the stories. A data indicator of that, so to speak, would be a ways in our history. We did a media survey, actually we did several of them, probably three or four over the time weve been in existence, our 26 years, where we took a chunk of time about this time of year. It was always the same time period. And we randomly picked copies of the two daily papers, Pioneer Press and the Star Tribune and we just counted. And we said, how many women had bylines, how many stories were about women, how many photos had women in them, how many women were cited as expert sources, and we did it by the section, so the sports section, the business section, the variety or the general section. And counted them up and reported it. And it was dismal. It was worse than we thought. It was like in the teen percent-wise of women in all those areas. And when weve repeated the study for comparison, one year it might have bumped up kind of in the mid 20s. The last time we did it it had actually gone down. And so that was a data indicator of what we knew intuitively that womens voices just werent being heard and this was a way to put them out there. Collins: And there was obviously big social movements in the 70s. Did the Womens Press grow out of that culture or subculture at all? Magnuson: Yes, I would say it did. During that year that we were writing a business plan, and figuring out who would the staff be and how would be pay them and what kind of stories would we do and where would they come from, we really looked to Ms. Magazine as a model. And over the years theyve really had their own story kind of on a national scale that I think had even more ups and downs than weve had, of being an advertising-free publication. Of being an advertising-driven publication. Of being a non-profit. Of being part of a foundation. And I think is a good example of not giving up and when a model wasnt working, evolving into something else. About the time when we started was a period when they were advertising base was their revenue model and they were really in deep tobacco and alcohol

advertising. And not that alcohol advertising is bad per se, I would say tobacco is. But it was the kind of alcohol ads with the woman in the elegant evening gown draped across the car, sort of visual in the ads. And they were in bed with them, so to speak. They could not afford to offend those advertisers or to not take that advertising. They needed the revenue. So we were very cognizant of that setting up our model and saying, how would we do this? And chose to be advertiserdriven is where we started out getting most of our revenue, and we still do. But based on their experience we were very clear up front that we were not going to take tobacco ads. And in the beginning we said no alcohol ads at all. And thats opened up. And over the years a few more categories were added in. We decided at one point after a lot of interesting conversation, that we werent going to take cosmetic surgery ads. And we decided we were not going to take anti-abortion ads. Not meaning that we were promoting abortion, but what we were promoting is a woman having full information, full knowledge to make her own decisions, not having some of those decisions be made up front before the information got to her. So we do this dance with advertising revenue but I think weve navigated it pretty well. Collins: And right now advertising revenue still, like you said, makes up a good portion of it. Magnuson: Nearly all of it. Collins: Is it harder especially in the beginnings of a project like that, cause youre coming into the project with kind of idealistic goals anyway, to also have this idealistic goal about the money that kind of restricts who much revenue you can bring in. Does that make it even more difficult for these sorts of projects? Magnuson: Yes. Yes. We had a business model that didnt play out quite as we projected. What a surprise that that would ever happen. Our expenses really were very close to the business model. The revenue was like, way lagging. It took us way longer to get the kind of revenue in the door than we expected. It was tougher than we thought it would be. Not on the investor side, but from the operating revenue, on the advertiser side. And yeah. Those were tough choices. I remember when we had a political candidate who wanted to pay, wanted to have a full page ad and was going to pay for it up front and when the ad came in the door, it was a gay-bashing, like, blatantly over the top ad. And how painful and very necessary it was for us to give that money back and say we werent going to run the ad. Collins: What were the connections to the LGBT community in the beginning? Magnuson: Well, we heard two kinds of feedbacks on our content. One was Why dont you ever cover anything about lesbians? Why are you against us? The other kind of comment that wed hear is, Why do you only write lesbian

things? So we thought we were hitting pretty well. So I wouldnt describe us as a GLBT-focused publication like we talked about Equal Times or now Lavender Magazine. Our audience is broader than that, but were certainly inclusive of that part of the womens community. Collins: Was that kind of a unique thing at the time you started for media to be that sort of inclusive? Or was it more like mainstream media it wasnt really on their radar. Magnuson: I think the second, yeah, and I think we were in a local media environment of some other alternative publications. So it wasnt unheard of, but I would say part of the reason why we had so many alternative publications locally is there was feeling the mainstream media wasnt covering it. Collins: What was the culture like of you all when you started? What did you all do, how did you interact with each other? Magnuson: Well, that first planning year we officed in our editors house. So she cleared out the first floor of her house, and brought in some desks and a copy machine and so wed come over, wed either work on our own or wed come over there when we were going to work together. We had meetings and let ourselves in the kitchen door, but the lunch in the fridge and come out to the dining room which was our conference room table and I had a child in nursery school at the time so her carpool would drop her off after nursery school and wed pull her lunch out of the fridge and she preferred to eat lunch under the table, and wed be working at that dining room table. So it was that kind of environment. We were very egalitarian in the early time, where we said everyone would make the same amount of money. Everybody would take a turn. We werent going to do that secretary thing which was so demeaning to women. We were going to all take turns answering the phone. Some of those things again bumped up against reality and evolved over time. But it was a very egalitarian beginning and I think part of the reason for our success is we still really work at a work environment where we value everyones opinion. Anyone can have input on anything were doing. It doesnt mean everybody decides everything, but theres a real atmosphere of intentional communication and mutual respect. Collins: Hows that developed over time or how have you kind of met the tension thats sometimes inherent to having these ideas beginnings. And having to adjust for reality? Magnuson: Well one thing we learned along the way was for different kinds of skills we were bumping up against the real world where different skills demanded different market rate salaries. And if we wanted a certain kind of skill, we were going to have to pay to get that. So we let go of the idea that everybody needs to make the same. And that was ok. We had one period in our history where we were not doing as good a job as we would have liked at communicating

internally. Were a communications business, youd think wed know how to do that. And we werent doing a good job inside of our own staff and our offices, so we actually brought in a consultant to sit down and work with us and shepherd us through kind of a painful process and conversations of talking about how do we talk to each other? And how would we like to be talking with each other and we developed an intentional communication process. Very simple but not always easy to do in terms of speaking directly to the person you have a concern with. So if youre in my office and something youre doing is just driving me crazy, I shouldnt be talking to Susan about it, I need to talk with you. And if Im talking with Susan about it she needs to remind me, you need to talk with Jon. And when were having this conversation, both of us need to be really good listeners, and we need to stick at it till the two of us resolve whatever it is. And so it doesnt sound like rocket science, but to put it into practice and really live that, was really a stretch for a lot of us, especially me. Collins: When was that? Magnuson: Gosh, Id say 10 or 12 years ago. But it has transformed our workplace. Collins: We are Minnesotans after all. Magnuson: We dont want to say anything thats not nice. Collins: So tell me about the journalism, cause thats why you all exist. Magnuson: It is. Collins: What sort of things did you focus on more when you were starting out? Magnuson: When we were starting out we were a biweekly newspaper, tabloid newspaper format and we were much more news in the traditional definition than we are now. And we took on some things like a sexual harassment claim against some star basketball players at the U of M. And I think took it on in a much more direct way than the other local media and with a different perspective on that situation and that case. We were the first and only media outlet initially to cover Ann Bancrofts polar expedition. The first trip she did nobody else even mentioned it and I forget the process now, but somehow we figured out a way in the technology available then to get reports from her during the trip and could publish part of her journal. But that wasnt being done. So our goal really was to tell stories that werent being told elsewhere or if it was a story told elsewhere to tell it with a very different, meaning, womans perspective. Whats the womans take on whatever this is? And thats still a measuring stick we use for why would we tell this story, why would this be in our pages? Is it a story thats not being told and are we going to tell it with a different perspective? So we started out much more news and over 26 years the definition of news and the time cycle changed

a lot. So news is what happened 10 minutes ago now and we were biweekly print publication. So over time we evolved too much more story, opinion, commentary, and thats the language Id use to describe what we do now. Were not news. Were story, were opinion, were commentary and really had that component in the beginning. One of the hallmark pieces we started out with and we still do is a profile every issue with the underlining assumption that every women has a story. And so sometimes those profiles might be, I think once it was Marilyn CarlsonNelson. So theres kind of one extreme of public profile woman. More likely the stories are going to be one time we did my next-door neighbor who is 92 years old, and what did she have to say? What is her take on life and her experience? I would say they tend to be more the everyday folks. The teacher in your childs school, the woman down the block, your aunt Mabel. Collins: Thats interesting, that seems like when we do a profile of a public figure, often it validates some underlying assumptions we have about this person being important. Does this say something about, does it have its own assumption that everyone is important or everyone has this sort of thing to share? Magnuson: Yes. Yes. The assumption of what our profile is every woman has a story. So we could go out to the bus stop or pick someone in a grocery store and she would have an important story to tell. We currently, we still do the profile every issue. We also have a frequently running column called Leader Voice where a woman is speaking from a leadership perspective but most of the women writing that opinion or commentary piece are not leaders in the sense of the Marilyn Carlson-Nelson. They are going to be the woman from the supermarket or the teacher in the school. But they have some perspective on what it means to be a leader in life. So its not only does every woman have a story, every woman has something to say about leadership in our world and what that looks like. Collins: How have your readers changed over time? Who was your readership when you started, and who are they now? Magnuson: Thats a great question. Every two years we do a pretty extensive survey of our readers and the reality is they havent changed very much. We ask a lot of the same questions every time precisely to measure whats shifting, whats changing. And they continue to be primarily women, but we have probably about a 4% readership of men. They tend to be primarily metro-area. Some greater Minnesota and I guess a piece that has shifted over time with technology changes is more readers are not from Minnesota; theyre from all over. We get letters to the editor from all over the world. So thats a little bit of a shift, but primarily its a metro area audience of women. They still tend to be evenly distributed from about 18 to 60 years of age. And you might think that cohort reader group would just keep getting older and older but they dont. They keep coming in at that younger end. They continue to be pretty highly educated. They continue to be, have a profile of like a life-long learner. Theyre taking pottery

classes and writing classes and scuba diving classes. They are engaged in their communities. Most all of them, 96% of them vote. They volunteer at a high rate; they contribute financially to causes they support. They like to do business with other women. They like to do business with locally owned businesses versus a national chain. They like to spend their dollars with socially conscious businesses, environmentally friendly businesses, and that really hasnt changed a lot over time. Were fortunate that over half of our readers have been reading us ten years or more and they have changed with the times just as we have. A lot more of them read us online now and when we started out online, like what is that? But I think the readers are very similar to our readership when we started out. Collins: How unique are you in the country? Are there a lot of womens papers? Magnuson: There used to be. And I would say were very unique now. But there used to be a lot of us. There was an association of womens newspapers and magazines and there are very few left. Most of them have gone the way of a lot of the vibrant publications we used to have in the Twin Cities. So part of that same trend. But most dont exist anymore. Collins: Does it say something about the Twin Cities that you all have managed to survive there? Magnuson: I think it says something about the Twin Cities interest in public journalism. I think it says something about the vibrancy of the womens community in the Twin Cities, which is pretty distinct from the rest of the country. And honestly I think it says something about some of the tenacity of the people who have worked here. Collins: And who are your predecessors of the publication? Cause obviously there was a big alternative media scene and community you see in the Twin Cities here. What are the some ones that you remember? We talked really briefly earlier. Magnuson: Well I think theres been a really vibrant, and to some degree some of it is still there, of geographic community publications in the Twin Cities area. And Molly, our original editor and I came out of that tradition. We had worked at the Park Bugle community newspaper together and there was a pretty active association of community newspapers and there was a lot of that going on so it was easy for us to imagine taking that model of a geographic community and morphing that into a womens community based on a wider geographic area of Minnesota. You know I missed the question. Ask me again. Oh ok. There was, prior to us, I dont remember the name but there was another womens magazine locally that was four color, kind of a glossy magazine, much more of a fashion kind of thing. I think it was out there a couple years. There were something called the Equal Times and I mentioned that one of our previous editors had been

before coming to us editor of Equal Time which was a LGBT newspaper. And that closed up, went out of business. There was recently, something called Womens Business Minnesota. Which lasted for about a year and a half. That was maybe like five years ago, I think. And many that Im just, arent coming to the top of my mind. But there have been a lot of publications that have come and gone in the Twin Cities and some that have come and stayed. Collins: How do you think this sort of work impacts peoples, the journalists life? Or your life I guess too? Does it kind of wear people out or does it kind of wear people up? Is it really like a positive thing or is it hard to stay with for people sometimes? Magnuson: All of the above. I think when youre working in a mission-driven situation, which I would describe us that way, there is a lot of that boying up. When you have the opportunity to go to work and feel like your work matters. And youre making a difference. And it contributes to something larger than bringing home a paycheck. Not to diminish that, because thats pretty exciting, but to know that its that and more, goes a long ways. I mean its why a group of us came together that year to try to figure out, is this something we could even do? So the mission piece is really important. And we have always felt that he work we did, the end product was really important. Weve also felt that how we did what we did was really important. So we have tried to pay attention to internally, well enough said. Lets see, what else can I say about that? And at the same time, the flip side is, journalism is typically not a business where youre making big bundles. Its just not. If you said, well, what career can I go into to make a bundle of money, you probably wouldnt choose this one. And during tight times people have just not made a lot here. Weve had to do salary cutbacks a couple times in our history. There were a couple times when we needed to lay people off. That was extremely painful. Thats not fun for anybody. The people who are leaving or the people who are staying. And so yes, it can be very stressful and I think its an individual thing if that whole package is going to jazz somebody, if its going to energize someone, or if its going to burn them out and say, I cant do this anymore, I have to move on. I think both of those things have happened. Collins: Do you still see yourself as playing a role, kind of a counterweight to some of the mainstream media coverage, or is it more almost a community forum at this point? Magnuson: I would say both. I think our goal is still to, if we arent telling stories that arent being told or telling them with a different lens, then honestly we could close up and we could all go find some easier work to do. So if were not doing that I think, I wouldnt do this anymore. If its not making a difference in that way. So I think we are still doing that. And again as technology has changed, weve opened the door a lot more for exchange of information so its not a one way, heres the words everybody, consume them. But we invite readers every issue to

send us their thoughts on a question. So our February issue coming up, for example, we asked, the theme of the issue is Love your Body, cause its Valentines Day month. Do you love your body? And if not, why not? And what would it take to love your body? And the responses we got were just amazing and all over the map from totally in love with who they are and comfort in their skin to stories about self-hate and eating disorders starting at nine years old and all over the map. And so we invite those kinds of comments every month on a certain question of the month. We also have a standing invitation for people to send us their personal stories, their essays on whatevers on their mind, either get on their personal soapbox, or heres an experience I had and wheres what I thought about it. And again, just really insightful, smart, amazing pieces. I think a lot of our strongest content comes from things that readers send us. We have a Facebook pages where exchanges go on and so its much more, its reader engagement in a different way with the kind of technology we have now where we can send Tweets and were not waiting for two weeks later till we print the next piece of paper. Although I will say, different than maybe the stereotype in the world, and maybe different from the experience of some publications, were going to be in print for a long time. Last year our print circulation grew. Our online audience of course was growing, but our print circulation grew too. And I dont know if thats been a common experience for publications. But our readers value and not just the older ones, the younger ones as well, that tactile experience. They value putting something in a purse or a briefcase or spreading it out on the table at the coffee shop. Collins: Do your advertisers also value that? Magnuson: They do. In a big way. Yeah. But again, with the evolution and technology we can offer advertisers options to only do electronic advertising, to do some hybrid buys where you buy an ad and its print and online, some people dont care about online. They just want to be in print. And so we have a wider array that were able to offer our clients. Collins: Are there any experience that stand out to you as kind of emblematic of what the Womens Press is about? I know Im asking you to catalogue through a couple years. Magnuson: Emblematic of what were about. Let me, this is off the top of our head. This is our current issue. Maybe some examples of stories we run is a way of answering that. So if Im picking up the January issue our feature story was Men Step Up. And the point of being the Womens Press is to give women more equal time. So we dont usually do this, but the interview was with three men. That was our feature story for the month. And it was all men working in the field of gender violence and asking them why do they do this work and why do they think its important, and what are they finding, and whats their experience. And they talked about the importance of men needing to step up, that gender violence is not a womans issue, its a cultural issue and its time for men, who are usually

the perpetrators, to step up and take some responsibility for helping to solve the problem. So that was one kind of story. Our profile, we talked about our profiles, that issue, was a woman who had recently been released from Shakopee womens prison and was incarcerated for a felony and was trying to remake her life and opened a Laundromat as kind of a community center in a neighborhood where she grew up in Minneapolis and what her experience has been with that. Our audience is big readers. So every issue we profile a book group and this is one of those reader generated kind of content. And readers will write about their group and what theyre reading and what theyd recommend and why that made a good discussion and why does their book group work. We also do a piece every issue called Book Shelf where a woman writes maybe about some area of expertise she has or an area she has a lot of opinions about and recommends books on that topic. Collins: Kathy, where do you think you all are headed? Is there any certain direction youre headed or are you just adjusting year by year according to whats going on? Magnuson: I think whats carried us all the years is our mission of telling womens stories in ways that build community and encourage change. Its been our mission since the beginning, it still is our mission. And I think what that looks like in terms of is it a piece of paper, is it a website, is it a something else. Well obviously change over times in ways that we dont even know what that is. But the reason, a big part of the reason were still here after 26 years is the mission hasnt changed. And so we have a laser focus on that. And I think that will continue to evolve. Like two years ago we changed from being in that biweekly newspaper format and became this magazine format. That was a part of that evolution. It was a part of catching up with, you know I said we havent been like news for a long time; weve were opinion and commentary and story. Well it was finally matching the form to the function of more a magazine format but it was the same mission all along. So I dont really have predictions about what the form will look like, but I know the mission will still be there. Its kind of like that underlying principle of telling stories that arent being told. Telling them with a different perspective. If that went away or the mission went away, kind of like, whats the point? Lets close the doors and do something else. Collins: Those are two of the main responsibility of normal journalism anyway, of mainstream journalism, of all journalism, right? Its telling the stories that arent typically told too. Magnuson: I dont know. If you talk to say either of the daily papers in town, the Pioneer Press or the Star Tribune. I dont know if theyd say telling the stories that arent being told. They might say its telling whats going on in our community this day. And they dont really care if its also on every TV channel and its also in the other daily paper, that might be a measure of theyre doing what theyre

supposed to be doing. I dont want to put words in their mouth, but I dont know if that would be the same. Collins: Where are your colleagues that you started with, now? Magnuson: Lets see, well, our founding publishers, one of them is still involved here. The other one lives in Arizona. But actually the two of them do another division of Minnesota Womens Press Inc. We have a center for Feminist Reading, and they do a bimonthly books magazine and they do reading groups and book travel groups domestically and internationally. So the two of them kind of are doing that over division but not engaged with the rest of the operation so much. One woman who was in that initial planning group was on our staff for quite a while as a copyeditor. And when she retired she was very proud and she still is to say she was the Womens Press first retiree. But she still comes in every Tuesday afternoon to volunteer. Shes Im guessing in her 90s. But shows up every Tuesday afternoon to see what she can help with. I mentioned that a previous editor of ours was working at the U of M working on their alumni magazine. Another, two other previous editors are freelance writers in the Twin Cities community, so theyve stayed in that realm of journalism. Another previous editor is working at a local college campus on one of their in-house publications. Right now our staff has quite a bit of history. My co-publisher started about year three and has been here since. She started out working part time weekends doing some data entry when stories would come in typed on a piece of paper and then we had to had to retype them into a computer. Remember that? Or maybe you dont, you might not be old enough. Two of our sales people actually had been on our staff at earlier times in our history and have come back again for a second round. One of our previous graphic designers is at an ad agency. So a lot of people are local and still somehow in media. Some are not. They live on the east coast or the west coast or theyve gone off to do other things. One of our early, she was not a staff person, but one of our very early board members and one of our first investors, cashed out her retirement and quit her executive-level corporate position and traveled around the world for a year and a half. And now she lives in different parts of the world. The stuff she owns fits in a duffel bag, I think, and she just goes places and volunteers. Collins: It sent people everywhere. Magnuson: It has, it has. Almost a year ago this spring he had a 25th anniversary party and we tried to track down as many of those previous staff people as we could and it was fun and interesting to reconnect with some of them. Collins: And youve been with it the entire way, right? Or did you take a break? Magnuson: I took a little break about Year Three to Year Five.

Collins: Its just a little break. Magnuson: And actually at the time when I left I didnt know that Id ever be back again. But I was in the job market and they were looking for somebody and we reconnected and here I am. Havent left. Collins: Are there any, obviously youve had other opportunities over the world. Whats made you kind of stick along with this? Magnuson: What a good question. So like, why are you still doing this? Its very clichd, but he mission is a big piece. An opportunity to tell the stories is quite an, what we talked about at our anniversary, what it is its, you feel so proud of our work, and you feel so humbled at the same time of being able to be the vehicle that carries the stories of such amazing people. And I think you referred to that, I dont remember if the mic was already on, but in our initial conversation of, we arent the story were just the vehicle for the stories, of telling other peoples stories. I think when I first signed onto this project, before that first year, the part that personally was the most interesting to me was not the feminist part, but it was the challenge of, could we make this go? Could we write a business plan and figure out a model and fund this as a startup and then ongoing operationally? Could we really pull this off and make it work? That was like, that was a big challenge, in an exciting way. And over time that hasnt gone away. That continues to be a piece we keep working on is how do we keep this business model, one that works for us and keeps us telling the stories and such an appreciation for the feminist piece. For the story piece. And an understanding that the stories we tell become our reality. And the stories we share are what bind our communities together or break us apart. And the power thats in stories. Stories sounds like a kids thing, or a silly thing, or a once upon a time lets make up this thing thats not reality-based, but real story has such power in it that its really kind of a humbling experience to do that story work. Collins: One last question, I really appreciate you taking time out of your day, because I know you must have a ton of work around here. Magnuson: Nothing to do. Collins: Whats your assessment of how the culture itself has changed around you in the last 26 years? Magnuson: Well, when we started out and we had a prototype before we started publishing when we were looking for advertisers and looking for investors. And we did art fairs and coffee conversations. We did all kinds of things to connect with people and conducted surveys and there was a lot of suspicion of, oh, a womens publication, what does that mean? What are you women up to? And what do you think youre doing, anyway? And suspicion and fear, honestly, of

This cant be anything good. What is this about? And if you were some assumption, if you were pro-woman you must be anti-men. It was either one or the other. It couldnt be something in between. And I think that was some very pervasive attitudes. I remember women with corporate positions saying they would never dare have a copy of that on their desk. It would be the death of their career if their supervisors saw that they were engaged with or reading something like that. Today that has changed a lot. But its not totally gone away. And in some ways its just become more subtle. And so for example, I mentioned the article where we interviewed the guys about gender violence. In the 80s, domestic violence was not, if you said domestic violence mostly people wouldnt know what youre talking about. And if you said, spouse abuse or partner abuse, or probably partner wasnt a term then but youd say wife abuse or husband abuse because it goes both ways, that was just not something that polite people talked about. And if you saw it in your neighborhood youd probably turn the other head because theres that Minnesota thing, and people wouldnt want you to know about that or wouldnt want you to see that. Youd never speak up youd never call the police, for heavens sakes. And thats changed a lot. But I think theres still a perception that using domestic violence as an example, is a womens issue. Its a womans problem; its not a cultural problem. Well, so we have arrived on that one? Well, no. Another example is human trafficking. In the 80s, people would say, what the heck is that? And I think today a lot of people hear that term and dont really know what that means. And they dont know that Minnesota is one of the leading states in the country for human trafficking of girls into prostitution. And thats something that we kind of want to turn the other way and not see it, like domestic violence. Thats not nice, its not pretty, we dont want to think that happens. Its horrifying. And commonly a response is to ignore it. Like, I dont really want to look at that. I dont want to think about that. A next evolution in that issue I think is where people recognize that it happens. And it happens here. And it happens in our own cities. And its a reality and its not a womans issue, its a cultural issue. How are we going to own this together? Name it, recognize it, admit it and work with it. So things have changed. And things have stayed the same in some ways. The last time we did that media survey where we counted up with the daily papers, we kind of tough, well, is the results going to say that weve worked ourselves out of a job? Thats kind of the goal and how would we feel about that? And really expecting that the numbers would be much better than they were and they had gone down. So, yeah things have changed and we havent worked ourselves out of a job yet. Collins: Thats a good and bad thing, right? Magnuson: Well mostly bad, I wish that were the case and then wed move onto something else. Not there yet. Collins: Is there anything else that you want to throw in or anything that youve been thinking about that I havent asked about?

Magnuson: Maybe the pause says it. I guess not. Collins: Ok. Thank you so much.