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Howie is Minnesota’s Columnist, writing about power, money, sports and civic life across the state. His daily column is sponsored by Lyric Kitchen . Bar of Duluth.
Now and then in the local media business, something simple happens that quietly says a lot about where things are headed. This week, it’s FOX21 KQDS' redesigned website.
The new Fox21online.com isn’t just a fresh coat of paint. It’s a reminder that in a digital-first era — where readers decide every day which local outlets deserve their attention — presentation, usability and speed matter as much as the journalism itself.
And right now in the Duluth television market, FOX21 has clearly raised the bar.
Spend a few minutes on the redesigned site and the first thing you notice is how clean it feels. The layout breathes. Headlines are easy to scan. Stories load quickly. Navigation makes sense. In a regional television market where some news websites still feel like they were designed during the MySpace era, that alone is a small revolution.
FOX21 News Director Matt McConico said the goal from the start was straightforward. “It is a cleaner, more modern look for our website,” he said.
Mission accomplished.
The redesign also reflects something important about how local newsrooms operate today. The website is no longer a secondary platform where television stories get dumped after the broadcast. For many viewers — especially younger ones — the website is the newsroom.
That reality makes performance metrics important, and early numbers from the redesign are encouraging.
“We're very happy with its early success,” McConico said. “It's an expected thing that when you change a website, traffic dips a little bit at first. Not us. We've actually seen traffic increase right after the change.”
Anyone who has ever been involved in a website rebuild knows how unusual that is. Most redesigns come with a temporary audience penalty while readers adjust to new navigation and layout changes. Avoiding that dip suggests FOX21’s audience immediately recognized the improvements.
Behind the scenes, the overhaul also included a major upgrade to the technology that powers the site.
“We also changed the ‘back end’ — called the Content Management System — giving us so much more flexibility than before with design and story presentation,” McConico said.
That matters more than readers might realize. A strong content management system is what allows a newsroom to publish quickly, present stories more creatively, and adapt coverage in real time — all essential tools in today’s competitive digital news environment.
The new platform also allows FOX21 to share content more easily across its broader network of stations.
“We're now able to more easily share stories from all around our Coastal Television stations,” McConico said. “Just days after the change, we've been able to easily share what our stations in Alaska are doing with their Iditarod coverage.”
That kind of collaboration expands the range of stories available to readers while still keeping the focus on Northland coverage.
The system also improves partnerships beyond FOX21’s own stations. “It's also easier to share content from other partners,” McConico added.
All of this points to a broader reality in today’s local media landscape: strong digital infrastructure is no longer optional. It’s the foundation.
For readers in the Duluth market, the takeaway is pretty simple. The FOX21 site now looks and feels like a modern news operation. Clean design, smoother navigation, stronger technical backbone — all of it working together to deliver stories more efficiently.
In a competitive media environment where audience trust and attention must be earned every day, those details matter.
Right now, Fox21online.com has set the standard among local television news websites in the Twin Ports. And, at least for the moment, it isn’t particularly close.
