Racket (Minnesota)

The Racket is a writer-owned, reader-funded website founded in 2021 by a group of former City Pages editors: Jessica Armbruster, Jay Boller, Em Cassel, and Keith Harris. Racket focuses on local news, politics, music, arts, culture, food and drink, and theater in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul area.^[1][2][3]

Racket

Type	News website
Owner(s)	Writer-owned
Founded	2021
Language	English
Headquarters	St. Paul, Minnesota
Website	www.racketmn.com

The previous funding model used by Racket's predecessor City Pages, as well as most alt-weekly newspapers, depended largely on advertising, but Racket's founders felt that this model was outmoded. Instead, it is funded largely by reader subscriptions, a model inspired by the earlier success of Defector Media.^[3] Racket reported in 2024 that it had generated $322,000 in revenue over the previous year, including $242,000 from subscriptions.^[4]

In 2024, Racket won five Page One Awards, given annually for outstanding journalism by the Minnesota Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. These included first-place wins for Best Interview (Keith Harris for “My Teen Niece Helps Explain the Taylor Swift Show I Saw on Saturday”) and A&E/Culture Criticism/Reviews (Harris for “I Saw 30 Concerts in 30 Days”).^[5] Racket also won four Page One awards in 2003, including first place for Arts & Entertainment Reporting (Jay Boller for “How Music Streaming Impacts Minnesota Musicians“).^[6]