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Last Tuesday, longtime Minnesota journalist (and former Star Tribune reporter) Mike Kaszuba died after a sudden illness. He passed away surrounded by loving family members and leaves behind a robust civic legacy. Mike knew the value of probing, public interest journalism, and delivered it on deadline.
We know, because we had the pleasure of watching him do it for so many years.
A decade ago, Mike ran across references to Public Record Media (PRM), the small, scrappy, open-records nonprofit organization on whose board we serve, and cold-called PRM to get involved.
PRM requests government records, reports on documents and sues government entities when lawful access to records is denied. Mike immediately offered to help the organization as a writer and researcher. He eventually became PRM’s primary editorial voice — submitting hundreds of data requests to Minnesota and federal government entities, and writing dozens of stories about government operations.
Mike broke stories on data center secrecy, problems with “violence interrupter” contracting in Minneapolis, mining projects in northern Minnesota, the unusual death of Republican operative Peter Smith in Rochester, and many, many other facets of the state’s civic reality.
He had an encyclopedic knowledge of Minnesota’s civic life and was constantly searching for angles left uncovered by others. Mike had an unfailing belief that the public should be able to understand what America’s large institutions — governmental and corporate — were up to.
