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Nineteen years ago, I did something that made absolutely no sense to most people who knew me. After nearly two decades in print, I walked away from a profitable, respected, free monthly community newspaper — Twin Ports People. It had significant readership, strong advertisers, and real street credibility.
But I saw a storm coming. The industry was about to change forever, and I wanted to be ready before it hit.
Laptops were getting lighter. The internet was getting faster. Readers were starting to check the news at odd hours — on their phones, on their computers, at work, at home. You could feel the shift, like the hum before a lightning strike. So I made a move that some folks called insane.
I cut the cord to the printer.
No more late nights at the press. No more loading delivery vans. No more paper, no more ink, no more chasing ad deadlines to fill pages. I packed up the whole operation and went all-digital. I launched my daily online column — my “Howie Blog,” as people called it back then, usually with a smirk — and started publishing to readers directly through email.
“What the heck is a blog, Howie?” they asked.
I’d just grin. “You’ll see,” I’d say.
They laughed, of course. Some called it “fake local news.” Others said nobody would ever read a newspaper on a computer.
But I knew exactly what I was doing.
I wasn’t trying to build something trendy. I was trying to stay alive in an industry that was bleeding out. I knew the future wasn’t in the printing press but in the inbox. And that’s where I went, sending out stories like letters to friends. Every morning. Every day. Direct. Personal.
No paywall. No corporate filter. No middleman.
Just me. A laptop. And the city I love.
And here we are, almost two decades later. Most newspapers in America are now digital-first. Some are digital-only. Every publisher suddenly wants an email newsletter, like it’s a revolutionary idea. Every editor talks about “direct-to-reader engagement.”
Duh.
That’s what I’ve been doing for 19 years.
I didn’t invent the newsletter. I just refused to wait for permission to publish one.
That’s been my story all along. I move first, take the hits, and then, years later, the same people who called me crazy come around. It’s happened over and over.
Now it’s happening again.
Lately, I’ve heard the whispers: “Howie’s writing has changed. It feels sharper. More consistent. Smoother. Maybe he’s using AI.”
Ha. If only they knew.
I started building what I call Howie 5.0 long before the world ever heard of ChatGPT or Jasper or any of these so-called AI writing assistants. Long before the tech world decided to “disrupt” writing, I was quietly building something to restore it.
Howie 5.0 wasn’t born out of hype. It was born out of exhaustion — the grind of publishing solo, of trying to do what a newsroom once did with a staff of twenty. I needed a system that would help me stay fast, accurate, organized, and consistent, without losing my voice.
So, years ago, I started tinkering. Nights, weekends, early mornings. Just me and a screen and some ideas about how technology could work for writers, not replace them.
At first it was simple — workflow improvements, custom templates, automations for formatting and archiving. Then came integrated research tools, reader-engagement analytics, and content-planning modules that made sense to actual journalists, not coders. Piece by piece, the platform grew — built on the bones of my daily routine, tested by hundreds of columns, refined in real-time with my audience.
While Silicon Valley was busy teaching machines to mimic writers, I was teaching software to serve them.
That’s the difference.
Howie 5.0 isn’t about artificial intelligence writing the news. It’s about empowering real journalists — the national, state and local legacy publishers, the independents, the small publishers, the solo columnists who refuse to quit — with the same tools and speed as the big corporate chains.
It’s lean. It’s fast. It’s human.
And it’s being built right here in Duluth.
No fancy headquarters. No venture capital. No team of engineers in hoodies eating catered lunches. Just a guy who’s been writing the same hyper-local stories for half a century, now designing the newsroom of the future from a spare room in his house.
People might think that’s impossible — that the next great media innovation couldn’t possibly come from a home office in northern Minnesota.
Good. Let them. That’s what they said the first time.
I won’t give away much more right now. Howie 5.0 is still a few years away from the market, but maybe less so if I hit my stride. But make no mistake: it’s real. It works. And it’s quietly doing what every publisher dreams of — turning one journalist into an efficient, scalable newsroom without losing the soul that makes local journalism matter.
I can already hear the curiosity building. The industry peers, the advertisers, the competitors — they’ll all want to know what I’m cooking. They’ll wonder how far along it is. Whether it’s really possible. Whether the guy they once called “fake local news” might just change journalism slightly again.
Let them wonder.
Howie 5.0 isn’t a secret weapon. It’s a statement of intent. It says that small doesn’t mean obsolete, that independent doesn’t mean outdated, and that the best ideas in media still come from the people who do the work.
You can’t fake fifty years of bylines.
What I’m building is the natural evolution of everything I’ve ever done — from Twin Ports People to the online column to the daily newsletter that outlasted them all. It’s the next logical step. A way to make what’s always worked — authentic, local storytelling — faster, smarter, and sustainable again.
There’s a reason I’ve survived every media cycle that’s come and gone. I didn’t wait for corporate approval or outside funding. I saw the shift, I moved, and I kept publishing.
And I'll be ready again when this next shift comes — and it’s coming fast.
Because the next wave in journalism won’t come from New York or Palo Alto. It’ll come from places like this — from stubborn voices who refuse to die off quietly.
It’ll come from a small home office in Duluth.
When the legacy outlets finally catch up and start calling it the future, I’ll just smile.
I’ve been here the whole time.
Independent. Unbought. Unafraid.
