A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER | When Someone Says, "Keep Going"

A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER | When Someone Says, "Keep Going"

By Tom Akaolisa, Founder & Publisher, MinneapoliMedia

MINNEAPOLIS, MN (August 23, 2026)

There are moments in journalism that never appear in the finished story.

They happen after the recorder has been turned off, after the interview has been transcribed, after the photographs have been selected, and after the story has gone out into the world. They happen in emails, phone calls, text messages, and conversations between people who may have first encountered one another because of an article, but somewhere along the way began to see the human being on the other side of it.

I experienced one of those moments this week, and it affected me more deeply than I expected.

Earlier this year, I invited Minneapolis poet, educator, and author Dralandra Larkins to join me for MinneapoliMedia's The Power of Her.

The series was created to document the lives, work, and journeys of women whose leadership, service, creativity, and experiences are helping shape Minnesota. Our conversations are loosely intended to last about 30 minutes.

Dralandra and I talked for more than 70.

We talked about her childhood growing up in South Minneapolis, poetry, education, faith, healing, community, vulnerability, her book Before I Lie, and what it means to create spaces where people feel safe enough to tell the truth about their lives.

I left that conversation deeply grateful for how freely she had shared herself with me.

What I could not have anticipated was how much encouragement would eventually travel back in the other direction.

In the months since our interview, Dralandra has been extraordinarily generous. She has told me what the interview meant to her, encouraged me personally, and spoken about MinneapoliMedia's work with a sincerity that has sometimes left me struggling to find an adequate response.

Dralandra is certainly not the first person to support MinneapoliMedia. Far from it.

This little newsroom has long been sustained in ways that never appear on a balance sheet. People have offered encouragement when the workload mounted. They have opened doors, shared access, recommended sources, provided records, trusted me with personal stories, and sent kind words at precisely the moment they were needed.

I do not consider any of those gestures small. A community newsroom cannot survive on money alone. It survives on trust, relationships, access, cooperation, and the shared belief that telling our local stories is work worth doing.

Then Dralandra did something that represented a different kind of first.

She asked me for MinneapoliMedia's donation link.

And she made a financial contribution to support our work.

There was no sponsorship, no advertising agreement, and no prior ask. There was no expectation attached to her contribution.

She simply chose to give.

In doing so, Dralandra became the first person I came to know through my work as a journalist who later chose, on her own initiative, to make a direct financial contribution to MinneapoliMedia.

I sat with that for a while.

The significance to me was not the amount. It was what her decision represented.

Running an independent community newsroom involves an immense amount of work that readers understandably never see. Before a story appears on a screen, there are hours of research, interviews, phone calls, public records requests, government meetings, fact-checking, photo selections, editing, and delicate conversations with people who have entrusted you with something important.

Then the story is published, and you move immediately to the next one.

There is always another story. Another meeting. Another person waiting for a call. Another community issue that deserves attention. Another morning when the newsroom starts all over again.

You keep doing it because you believe the work matters. But believing in the work does not mean you never wonder whether others see what goes into it.

That is why Dralandra's gesture reached me the way it did.

She did not simply tell me, "I appreciate what you're doing." She had already done that, generously and repeatedly.

This time, she acted on it. Her contribution said something to me that went beyond the transaction itself:

I see the work. I believe it matters. I want to help you continue.

For someone who spends so much time listening to others, documenting their lives, and trying to ensure their stories are handled with dignity, being on the receiving end of that kind of affirmation was humbling.

During our interview, Dralandra spoke extensively about making people feel seen. She talked about the responsibility of holding space for another person's truth, helping young people find their voices, and the difference between the stories that wound us and the truths that nourish us.

I thought I was interviewing her about her work. I did not expect that, months later, she would turn around and make me feel those exact same things.

Her contribution will help MinneapoliMedia, and I am profoundly grateful for that. But the gesture behind it did something for me personally.

It reminded me that this work is reaching people. It reminded me that the hidden hours behind the reporting are not invisible. And it reminded me that sometimes the person holding the microphone needs a little encouragement, too.

To everyone who has opened a door, shared a story, answered a question, recommended someone for an interview, or simply told me to keep going, please know that I remember those gestures, too. They helped build this newsroom.

Dralandra's contribution marks a new chapter in that continuing story. I wanted to acknowledge it publicly because firsts matter, and because every genuine act of support tells an independent newsroom something it occasionally needs to hear:

You are not doing this entirely alone.

Thank you, Dralandra.

Thank you for trusting me with your story long before you chose to support this newsroom financially, and for the quiet encouragement you have extended ever since.

You gave me two powerful words.

Keep going.

I heard you.

And I will.

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