On any given day at the Goodbye Blue Monday coffee shop in downtown Northfield, you will see several people scanning their computers instead of perusing a newspaper, as they nurse their morning coff ees.
The reason is that Northfield has two citizen journalism blogs, LocallyGrownNorthfield.org and Northfield.org, that are highly popular morning reads in town. With a total population of only 17,150, Northfield has two citizen journalism web sites covering local news, events and activities — Locally Grown, which attracts nearly 7,000 visitors a month, and Northfield.org, with a monthly readership of about 9,400.
Unlike their newspaper counterpart, the Northfield News, these websites provide citizens with more than just breaking news and a calendar of events. They also serve as important social and community hubs by providing a forum for civic discussion and a database of comments on articles from readers. They even showcase other local citizen blogs.
Two Sons of Northfield Remember Malt-O-Meal’s Good Ol’ Days
by Ryeon Corsi
“I don’t have anything against partying, but if you can’t party and work in the same day, then maybe you should give up one of them,” said the Glenn Brooks of Bill Stanton’s memory.
That was over thirty years ago. Glenn Brooks, the former president of Malt-O-Meal, has long since passed, but Bill Stanton lives on, as does his comrade, Allen Pleschourt.
Today, Bill and Allen remember the wisdom of Glenn Brooks with affection, as they do the many decades of work they devoted to Malt-O-Meal in Northfield.
Next year, the company will observe its 90th anniversary.
“I don’t think anyone grew up thinking they’re going to work at Malt-O-Meal, but somehow we all end up here,” Bill says.
Photo by Josh Rowan Students displayed "Elephant in the Room" in Buntrock Commons to draw attention to alcohol consumption on the "dry" campus.
Members of the Saint Olaf College community have been talking about underage binge drinking this month after a student wrote a column titled, “Hi, my name is Ole and I’m an alcoholic” in the student paper, and after a group of students collected enough liquor bottles and beer cans strewn around the campus (which has a “dry” policy) to construct a Volkswagen-sized sculpture in the student center.
“We have a pretty articulated policy that alcohol is not allowed on campus, and that applies to faculty and students,” Greg Kneser, vice president and dean of students, said last week, “That doesn’t mean everybody abides by it.”
Kneser said consequences for breaking the policy can range from the offender to pay $25 to complete a 90-minute program called “My Student Body” to expulsion, after multiple offenses. He said administrators also address a student’s behavior if Northfield residents or police catch him or her doing something inappropriate off campus.
Kneser said he does not believe the amount of problems associated with Saint Olaf students drinking on or off campus has changed in the 20 years he has worked at the school.
He guessed that the only change might exist in the attitude students and parents have about alcohol. They could be less conservative today, he said. So he believed there could be a greater percentage of underage students now who have at least tried alcohol.
In the Obama-Era, Plans Revive for a Northfield-Twin Cities Rail Line
By Logan Nash
With the national economy still a giant question mark, Northfield community leaders are pushing ahead to revive a long-delayed project to build a commuter rail line that would link the town to the Twin Cities metropolitan region.
The national economic downturn is precisely why a serious reconsideration of the commuter line, called the Dan Patch Corridor, is especially warranted right now, the line’s advocates say.
Once again, the Northfield Community Action Center and the Civic Engagement Program in the Center for Experiential Learning at St. Olaf teamed up on National Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week.…
Nate Jacobi, Assistant Director for Civic Engagement at St. Olaf’s Center for Experiential Learning, has alerted us to their Google map mashup “highlighting over 50 Northfield-area Community Organizations (nonprofits, schools…
An Iraqi child participates in the War Kids Relief project
A Minnesota-based non-profit is spending the next few months partnering children in New York City, Washington D.C., and Northfield with children in Iraq in an effort to build closer ties between the nations.
“We thought about Minneapolis, but decided on Northfield,” said Pam Middleton, executive director of War Kids Relief, which is a program of the Children’s Culture Connection non-profit.
Middleton will help select about two dozen eighth- and ninth-grade students across Northfield to participate. Each child needs to submit an application in school to be considered.
“Northfield is Middle America, but it’s also a special place. The citizens here are so engaged,” she said.
The children Middleton helps select will attend at least three afternoon gatherings in January, February and March at the Northfield Public Library. There, War Kids Relief organizers will help each Northfield teen begin a pen-pal kind of relationship with an Iraqi child. The youth will exchange letters, artwork and videos. The Northfield children will learn about Iraqi culture by hearing stories, playing Iraqi games and eating samples of the region’s food.
Amy Gohdes-Luhman, pastor of the Main Street Moravian Church, organized and hosted a town hall forum on heroin today. Panelists included: Dr. Charles Reznikoff – Addiction Medicine Specialist, Opiate Agonist…
It’s been a tough few months for many downtown businesses. First there were high gas prices cutting into families budgets, then there were the street projects complicating access, finally there was the Global Financial Contraction challenging the minds of the best and brightest.
As Radtke found out, local retailers are seeing some impacts on their customers. Pinched in the present and worried about the future, folks are being more careful about their money. Radtke reports that store owners have responded by cutting operating costs, working to build other income centers, and trying new promotions to get people into their stores.
Not all businesses are experiencing slowing sales. Some are holding steady and a few are even up slightly from last year. However, Radtke notes that even these business owners have contingency plans in place, such as a shift from luxury goods to more practical items.
Many local experts who spoke to Radtke believe that the media coverage of economic set-backs, a steady drumbeat featuring sub-prime mortgages in California, risky commercial loans in Iceland, and a store closing in Northfield can undermine consumer confidence. Feeding the pessimism, they warn, can extend the recession.
Radtke ends his piece on a positive note. Entrepreneurs, like the downtown business owners he interviewed, run on optimism. They’ll continue to make adjustments, and believe that economic conditions, and retail sales, will eventually improve.
Griff had suggested that I close the comments on this post and send them to my previous post on the Deep Economy. I’ve decided that I disagree. I hope that the comments on “Digging Deeper into the Local Economy” will focus on ideas for shifting some pieces of the economy from global to local in order to benefit the Northfield community.
For this piece, I’d like to explore the impact of the media on consumer confidence and economic conditions. Do you think the media’s stories on economic events have an impact on the economy?
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