Streets.mn is excited to announce that we are seeking writers, storytellers, photographers to research and write articles for a recently-awarded Minnesota Historical Society grant.
The grant seeks to deepen our community reporting on highway development and how the named highways have impacted the communities they are built through.
There are four topic areas we are seeking story ideas for, but we’re open to others you may have in mind, as long as they are highways built through a city or area since the 1950s in suburban and Greater Minnesota that have not had significant coverage.
- U.S. Route 14 between New Ulm and Rochester
- State Highway 36 to Stillwater
- State Highway 3 through Northfield
- U.S. Route 52 through West St. Paul
If you have experience with one of our identified highway areas, we’re especially interested, but we’re also very open to contributors who have passion for the topic or process of learning to research and write articles as well.
Each project is paid $1000, to be split between the storyteller and photographer.
Potential storytellers will pitch at the linked Call for Pitches form. The process of storytelling and photography will be approximately ten weeks long, beginning in October and moving through mid-December when we publish. Each storyteller and photographer will work with the Managing Editor. Participants do not need to be experienced journalists to participate in this opportunity.
Pitches will be accepted through Oct. 10 and reviewed on a rolling basis. We will select four pitches to continue on as projects to final publishing.
Article Research and Writing
Article Responsibilities:
- Propose and research story idea in one of the four topic areas (or one of your own)
- Research selected city and highway interaction using historical picture archives; maps; local news reporting, interviews and oral histories; and other sources before, during and after construction.
- Work with our Streets.mn Managing Editor to refine your research into an article posted to our site
- Work with photographer to match historic photographs with the same vantage today
- Collaborate with a project team from Streets.mn to ensure that grant deliverables are met, including bibliography and submission for review by local historians
- Follow the project timeline to be publish-ready by October/November 2025
Streets.mn will provide support in the following ways:
- An assigned editor to work with you providing content edits, layout ideas, check for grammar, spelling, etc
- Assistance connecting with necessary resources (photographer, local historian, interviewees) as able
Questions and comments can be addressed to Erik Noonan at [email protected].