There actually is no staff for the Minneapolis Observer these days, it's more like what is commonly known as a "mom and pop" operation. But since we don't have the means to change the tabs on our home page, here is a little background about The Observer instead.
Craig Cox created the Observer along with his wife and co-conspirator, Sharon Parker, way back in August 2001 as an antidote for the rapidly spreading epidemic of civic illiteracy in Minneapolis—and to satisfy Craig's virulent local news jones. We began with a primitive Web site and subscription-based weekly e-mail digest of neighborhood and City Hall news. That project morphed into a print weekly, which very quickly (three issues) was transformed into a more sustainable print monthly, which two years later morphed back to the more sustainable Web site only (whew!).
The current Web site was created by the good folks at FiveFiveFour, www.fivefivefour.com, who offered to set it up for us gratis a few years ago, and maintained it for us in the same manner until they got too busy, and had a baby besides. Since we don't have the means to hire someone to take care of the various little things that have come up since they could no longer manage it for us, we apologize for any glitches or confusing pages you may encounter.
Back to the narrative: In 2006 we started a print journal called Minneapolis Observer Quarterly, or MOQ (em-oh-queue), which, as the folks at Utne Reader have so artfully put it, "has the luxury of largely avoiding timeliness, focusing instead on the people, places, and ideas that make our fair city tick."
Utne's editors nominated MOQ for Best New Publication of 2006 in the Utne Independent Press Awards. We continue to be quite proud to be among the eight nominees for this honor.
And Craig, although working full-time for Experience Life magazine, does still check in on and report about the local political scene from time to time here on this Web site.
For more information about the current issue of MOQ, and how to subscribe, please click over to the MOQ page, www.mplsobserver.com/node/1229.
