Arts and Cultural Innovation as Small City Economic Development

Arts and journalism enterprises may serve as effective economic development tools for small cities and neighborhoods. The author demonstrates how a new, for-profit, weekly newspaper serving a Minnesota city of 12,000 residents in a county of 36,000 has diversified and energized a depopulated downtown and surrounding region. Through powerful investigative reporting and by investing in and hosting exhibits by area artists, the newspaper has attracted new businesses into adjacent unoccupied retail spaces.