Welcome to Root River Current!

Greetings…and WELCOME to Root River Current, a local online magazine created by local people for local communities. We hope you find our publication engaging, compelling, informative, and more than a little fun. 

Root River Current is a nonpartisan eMagazine committed to telling the stories of the people, culture, and history of the southeast corner of Minnesota including Fillmore and Houston counties, plus adjacent parts of Winona, Olmsted and Mower counties.

We do that through regular news articles, creative writing, photography, audio-visual content, and more.

Root River Current is a nonprofit publication available free on the Internet. We welcome reader support and contributions — both written and financial. Our organization was founded in 2022, is managed by a volunteer board of directors, and published its first stories in early 2023 (here’s more about Root River Current‘s inaugural year).

We’re excited to be here for you—thanks for giving us a look! 

Why have Root River Current?

When it comes to getting news in the 2020s, these are strange times. On one hand, information is everywhere. The worldwide web continues to explode with over 1.5 billion websites and hundreds more being created every minute. Add to that TV channels, streaming services and the like, and there are more communication sources than one person can ever hope to explore. Amazing!

On the other hand, in the last 15 years more than 1,500 cities and towns in the U.S.—mostly small communities in rural areas like ours—have lost a local newspaper, radio station newsroom, or local television news coverage. Hundreds more have consolidated. Why? It’s complicated. Economics is the main culprit, with Internet advertising and massive cost-cutting measures being huge factors.

Those changes have created what many call “news deserts.” You also hear about “ghost newspapers”—publications a mere shadow of their former selves, often published by absentee owners. What that means for rural towns and villages is that people are not getting the media coverage they were getting a decade or two ago. 

We set out to do something about that. We want to call attention to the positive stories that make our communities what they are—stories that inform and energize and are often overlooked. We believe it’s important that through Root River Current you have the opportunity to read more about the towns we live in, our community leaders, our neighbors, their talents and causes because well-informed communities are stronger communities.

Join us!

We invite you to visit Root River Current often–and subscribe to our weekly newsletter for updates on our latest articles, newest community voices, area photos, and so much more. It’s FREE!

We also invite you to get involved by submitting stories, photos, essays and more . And…we welcome your financial support!

Our goal is to create Root River Current by the people of our local area for the people of our local area.

Come join us on this journey…and let’s see where it takes us!

For Root River Current,

John Gaddo | Co-Publisher    John Torgrimson | Co-Publisher

Meet Root River Current’s Board of Directors

Root River Current is honored to be accepted as a full member of the Institute for Nonprofit News — an alliance of news organizations committed to shared values that advance excellence in journalism, trust between the press and the public it serves, and best practices for the nonprofit news field.