Howie: Essentia Health is the power behind northern Minnesota’s health care
Essentia’s strength in Duluth lies in its scale, integration and specialty depth. Without that concentration, northern Minnesota would export far more complex care to the metro. The region would lose physicians, revenue and economic stability. Its vulnerability lies in the same concentration.
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Howie: Bayfront still may be Duluth’s best idea
Bayfront remains one of the few places where the city still functions the way a healthy city is supposed to function: as a shared public space where people continue gathering together because they genuinely want to be there. Every summer, Duluth remembers that again.
Howie: Jim Oberstar understood Washington better than anyone
Oberstar approached Congress differently. He understood it as machinery requiring relationships, technical credibility, negotiation and committee leverage rather than ideological performance.
Howie: The hardest truth after George Floyd
History will remember George Floyd’s murder for many reasons. Protest. Rage. Reform. Politics. Division. Reckoning. But the enduring question may be simpler. Did America merely react to what it saw? Or did it finally learn to tell itself the truth?
Howie: What Glen Taylor understood about newspapers that Wall Street didn’t
The question is no longer whether newspapers are dying. The real question now is which institutions survive the transition from industrial-age newspapers into modern digital civic platforms. And whether Minnesota’s largest news organization fully understands what it must become next.
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Howie: Forsman won't run for mayor in '27
Howie's daily column is powered by Lyric Kitchen Bar in Downtown Duluth. Quote Me Arik Forsman on running for mayor of Duluth in 2027: "I am humbled ... that there are Duluthians who think I could make a half-decent mayor. But I have no plans to run for
Howie: Bayfront still may be Duluth’s best idea
Bayfront remains one of the few places where the city still functions the way a healthy city is supposed to function: as a shared public space where people continue gathering together because they genuinely want to be there. Every summer, Duluth remembers that again.
Howie: While others talked revival, Gary Doty did the work
Survival, for many old industrial American cities during the late twentieth century, became the central challenge itself. Doty helped Duluth survive long enough to rediscover confidence in itself again. That is not a minor civic legacy.
Howie: Minnesota’s political civil war weekend
The emotional political truth in Minnesota: The DFL fears permanently losing working-class and regional voters. Republicans fear nominating candidates who thrill activists but collapse in the suburbs. Both fears are real.