Online News and Chat

• E-Democracy
• www.e-democracy.org
• This moderated online forum now has discussion groups for 10 cities in the United States, United Kingdom, and New Zealand, but it started right here in the Twin Cities. Users are required to post under their real, full names and give their neighborhood of residence, a policy that has fostered some of the most thoughtful and civil discourse you’ll see on the Internet. They’re also limited to two posts a day, so you’ll find long, thought-out posts rather than sniping and one-liners. This is a great place to find out what’s on the minds of ordinary Twin Citians.

• Minnesota Independent
• www.minnesotaindependent.com
• Sponsored by the left-leaning Center for Independent Media, the Minnesota Independent is open and unapologetic about its slant. It also does reporting of the sort that larger news organizations simply aren’t doing any more, with a small but professional and scrappy staff.

• MinnPost
• www.minnpost.com
• After a serious shake-up in Twin Cities journalism in the past few years, respected editor Joel Kramer decided to take excellent journalism online. And many of the cities’ best reporters and writers followed him. Three main news stories are posted each work day at 11 a.m. A number of in-depth blog posts, covering arts, financial news, and more, appear throughout the day.

• Secrets of the City
• www.secretsofthecity.com
• While the ambitious monthly magazine The Rake met its demise in early 2008, its spirit lives on at Secrets of the City, with coverage of Twin Cities culture—from restaurants to fashion shows to bloggy ramblings of local characters. The site has also subsumed the popular locally focused discussion board, MNSpeak, where users post news items and links. (One of the most common topics is about out-of-towners looking for advice on moving to the Twin Cities.)

• Twin Cities Daily Planet
• www.tcdailyplanet.net
• A consortium of small and specialized news sources in the Twin Cities feed into the Twin Cities Daily Planet, which also includes a few originally reported stories as well. It’s a great place to catch the news that the bigger news outlets will overlook.

Photos and Maps

• John R. Borchert Map Library
• http://map.lib.umn.edu
• A portion of the University of Minnesota’s extensive map collection is online, including historical maps of Minneapolis and St. Paul and plat maps from every county in the state.

• The Minneapolis Public Library Photo Collection
• www.mplib.org/mphoto.asp
• More than 10,000 historical photos are available to search online. Look up trolleys or blizzards or political figures or whatever else interests you. You can also order reproductions.

• Minnesota Bookstore
• www.comm.media.state.mn.us/ bookstore
• Want your own copy of the local building codes, the Minnesota state accounting statutes, a Minnesota mug, or a state hiking map? It’s all here in this eclectic online store run by the state of Minnesota.

• Minnesota Historical Society
• www.mnhs.org
• The Minnesota Historical Society’s rich website offers resources for serious researchers and the casually curious. The society’s enormous photo collection is online and fully searchable, as are extensive birth and death certificate databases.

• Minnesota Reflections
• http://reflections.mndigital.org
• More than 75 organizations from around the state have pooled their image and document archives into one online searchable database including almost 20,000 images.

Twin Cities’ Best Blogs

• Minneapolis Metblogs
• http://minneapolis.metblogs.com
• Six bloggers who clearly love Minneapolis and love chronicling life here in its big and small moments maintain Minneapolis’s Metroblogging site. (Learn more at www.metblogs.com about these collective, city-focused blogs.)

• Minnescraper
• www.minnescraper.com
• The folks behind Minnescraper are passionate about buildings and development in downtown Minneapolis and beyond. While the blog and forum got their start during the condo boom of the early 2000s, the interest remains high. Find detailed information on Minneapolis building projects, maps, photos, and news updates.

• Start Seeing Art
• www.startseeingart.com
• Beyond a blog, this database of public art famous and obscure throughout Minneapolis and St. Paul is basically a one-man show, with photographs, maps, and brief histories of each of the works.

• Twin Cities Sidewalk
• http://tcsidewalks.blogspot.com
• You can tell a lot about a city from what’s going on on its sidewalks. This quirky blog includes a regular “Guess where?” photo of a sidewalk somewhere in the Twin Cities, updates on street life in both Minneapolis and St. Paul, and some personal asides.

• The Uptake
• www.theuptake.org
• “Will journalism be done by you or to you?” asks The Uptake. This is citizen journalism in the hands of some talented folks with a video camera. Much of the video is uploaded live, as it is being shot.

© Tricia Cornell from Moon Minneapolis & St. Paul, 1st Edition