A Transformation Redefining Local News
As countless publications have shuttered over the last two decades, The Star Tribune has navigated a fast-changing news industry with savvy. But its future looked uncertain as it faced a series of challenges all at once: changes in technology, consumer behavior, revenue and monetization, and cultivating talent. At this critical moment in the newspaper's 154-year-old history, The Star Tribune partnered with Code and Theory to transform its business and brand.
In less than six months, we delivered a comprehensive transformation: a modern web experience that's more accessible for younger readers, created new premium opportunities for advertisers, and leveraged best-in-class technology to build the system so it can all flex for the future.
Impact
- Less than 24 hours after launch, The Minnesota Star Tribune hit 32% of its monthly subscriber goal
- Launch day was the website's highest traffic day in its history
- Transformation drove over 50M Impressions from widespread press in publications including The New York Times, Fast Company, Washington Post, Adweek, Ad Age and more
Key Takeaways
- Designed a news experience more accessible and engaging for a younger audience
- Rebuilt the technical infrastructure for the entire website and app in less than six months
- Developed a new subscriber model designed to fuel growth consistently and sustain the business long term
Designed for Digitally Savvy Audiences
The original Star Tribune experience was dense, text-heavy and inflexible. We delivered an elevated design that's modern, responsive and aligned with what younger audiences expect across digital platforms.
The revamped design also unlocks new publishing capabilities. We developed new page-building and customization tools, immersive visual storytelling, and a premium high-impact ad system, all part of a performative design strategy that celebrates the content and presents it in a way that appeals to a larger, younger audience.
Built for Future Readiness
Code and Theory led the Star Tribune through a major digital transformation, migrating their platform from a deprecated PHP framework to a modern, scalable architecture using Next.js, React, TypeScript, and TailwindCSS. We unified their mobile and desktop websites, significantly improving SEO and reducing maintenance overhead. By adopting GraphQL and leveraging Vercel, we streamlined backend services, enhanced deployment speed, and built a robust breaking news feature that flawlessly handled their highest traffic day ever.
Our engagement also resulted in substantial improvements in Lighthouse scores and Core Web Vitals, while developing a scalable design system with reusable components to future-proof their platform.
Your thoughtfulness, attention to detail and dedication (as well as just pure talent and smarts) made this entire process of transforming The Minnesota Star Tribune possible. Thank you.
Crafting a Culture Shift
With an ambitious timeline of 6 months, the project required massive and constant collaboration. Our Design Transformation team created and delivered new processes, tools, and insights into how we work efficiently to empower their teams after launch.
This led to a transformation of not just the design, technology, and business, but also a tangible culture change — a “can do” attitude permeated The Minnesota Star Tribune Team because we just accomplished what seemed impossible.
Minnesota's Star Tribune, first published 157-years-ago, has re-launched with a fully responsive design, better performance across all platforms and improved breaking news. What a privilege.
Our holistic team across strategy, product, design, and engineering laid the foundation for The Minnesota Star Tribune to plan for the future of news and transform it to meet its readers' needs. We brought over 20 years of learning across industries to The Minnesota Star Tribune and created an ethos, ecosystem, and experience built to scale.
