Going local to heal politics and institutions, with Steve Grove

This podcast was recorded in late August 2025. Much has occurred since then, both in Minnesota and nationally, and listeners are asked to consider the episode’s treatment of politics and current events in the context of the time in which it was recorded.

Steve Grove is the publisher and CEO of the Minnesota Star Tribune. For many years, he had been a high-flying executive in Silicon Valley, working for firms like Google and YouTube. Then in 2018, he and his wife — who worked for a venture capital firm investing in startups outside of the coasts along with AOL founder Steve Case and now-Vice President JD Vance — decided to return to Minnesota, where Grove had grown up. His recent book, How I Found Myself in the Midwest: A Memoir of Reinvention, is about leaving the global hub of innovation for what’s often disparaged as “flyover country.” It’s also a story of recommitting to civic and political involvement, as Grove went to work for Minnesota governor (and future Democratic vice-presidential nominee) Tim Walz as head of the state’s departments of economic and workforce development. He was in this role when the pandemic struck the state, making him the principal liaison with a business community struggling to cope with restrictions meant to stem the spread of COVID.

In this podcast conversation, Grove discusses his personal experience of moving from Silicon Valley back to Minnesota, the benefits and tradeoffs of relocating there, and what he learned from having moved between the worlds of high tech, government, and publishing. He describes his experiences with finding both resistance and innovation in state and local government, and the perspective that gave him on Elon Musk’s DOGE attempt to reinvent government along Silicon Valley lines. (Grove believes that “If you're going to reboot government in a more powerful way, starting local has a lot better shot than starting national.”) He discusses the challenges of heading the Safe Reopening Group during the pandemic, which he frankly characterizes as a “deeply uncomfortable exercise in social engineering.” And he also describes his work since 2023 in attempting to reimagine the venerable Star Tribune at a time of severe challenges for print journalism and the news media more generally.