Randy Furst, a Star Tribune reporter for more than half a century, calls it a career

Randy Furst stood behind a baseball catapult in the now-gone Metrodome, determined to find out whether the Minnesota Twins had an unfair advantage in recent World Series wins. It was 2002, and the stadium’s former superintendent tipped off Furst that he would turn the air conditioning fans on behind the plate at key times in an effort to make the home team’s hits go farther.

By that time, Furst, now 78 and retiring Friday as a Minnesota Star Tribune reporter after more than a half-century at the newspaper, was already a seasoned veteran of the Twin Cities journalism scene. He was also a regular thorn in the side of generations of Twin Cities politicians, police forces and other powerful institutions.

Furst recalled how the director of the Metrodome’s governance body laughed as they tested out the reporter’s theories, watching as a baseball dribbled out of a catapult created at Furst’s request by a University of Minnesota professor. The Metrodome official called Furst “the Inspector Clouseau of journalism,” in reference to a bumbling detective in the “Pink Panther” movies of the 1970s.

But Furst kept digging. The professor and a group of students created a second device to launch balls, this one more of a cannon. Furst’s story ran about two months later, forcing Metrodome leadership to issue an order that workers not attempt to change game outcomes by tinkering with AC vents.

“It was wild, the story got picked up all over the country,” Furst said. “And, let’s face it, it was fun.”

For Furst, Friday marks the end of a 52-year stint as a general assignment reporter; it began when this newspaper was called the Minneapolis Star, which later merged with the rival Tribune. Furst is a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, one for an investigative series about migrant worker conditions, the other on questions regarding the innocence of two Black men convicted of rape.

Among his many other scoops was his detailing the corrupt practices of the Metro Gang Strike Force, a disbanded Twin Cities law enforcement group, and stories on three Northwest Airlines pilots who were drinking and flying.

As strong-willed and stubborn as he is widely beloved by newsroom colleagues, Furst said the Metrodome air-conditioning controversy was perhaps his favorite story in a career full of memorable bylines. It was also more lighthearted in tone than a lot of his work, which demonstrated his passion for holding people in power accountable in the face of injustice, and amplifying the voices of marginalized groups often ignored.

Abby Simons, the Star Tribune’s public safety editor, praised Furst’s “work ethic, sense of justice and the good soul that he is.”

“In a true testament to his character, he has long since earned the trust of not just so-called ‘important people,’ but also the activists whose voices we needed to hear before and after George Floyd was murdered,” Simons said.

Furst came to Minnesota to be an activist. Born in Virginia and raised in Connecticut, he got involved in activism as a young man in New York, writing for antiwar newspapers during the Vietnam War. His first wife, Gillian Furst, who died in 2015, traveled to Minnesota with her three kids from a previous relationship so they could be together.

Furst said he needed a decent job to support his new family, so he applied and got hired as a reporter for the Sun Newspapers in the Twin Cities suburbs. In 1973, he got a job with the Minneapolis Star. He now lives in Minneapolis with his wife, Rosemary; they were married in 2018.

Drawing from his past in activism, Furst for many years has been a leader for the paper’s union, the Star Tribune Newspaper Guild. Jeff Hargarten, a data reporter and chief steward for the union, said Furst took him under his wing and showed him the ropes. He praised Furst for serving as a leader when the newsroom needed a rabble-rouser.

“He was always the guy who stood up during a guild meeting to say, ‘We can always fight for more,’” Hargarten said. “He’s scrappy, and someone who will always advocate for fighting harder for workers and even harder for people who are disadvantaged.”

Furst didn’t limit his union advocacy work to the newsroom, or even to Minnesota. He connected to unions representing other groups like press plant employees and delivery truck drivers. Rick Sather, a truck driver who retired in 2009, said Furst was one of his best friends and a strong labor ally.

“He was such an honest person and a very good reporter,” Sather said. He didn’t think Furst would ever retire.

One of Furst’s strengths was his skill as an interviewer, able to get nearly any source to open up. Many of his colleagues love to retell the story of Furst’s impromptu interview with a KGB agent when Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev visited Minnesota in 1990.

Furst was staking out the hotel lobby where the Soviet group was staying. He asked the agent acting as spokesman to sit down for an interview. Next thing the agent knew, he had told Furst every detail of Gorbachev’s trip. The agent was heard mumbling as he left the interview, in a thick Russian accent: “That Randy Furst, he sucked my brain dry.”

Furst was also one of the only Twin Cities journalists who could get former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura, an outspoken critic of Minnesota media, on the phone for an interview.

“As far as reporters go, he was one who maybe I trusted a little. Believe me, that’s a lot to say,” Ventura said in an interview. (Furst provided his number.) The former governor said Furst “did his best to earn your trust.”

Former colleagues loved listening to Furst conduct interviews. Chris Serres, who sat next to Furst for a decade, said it felt like a front-row seat to the “Muhammad Ali of interviewing.”

“He was a beauty to listen to, and he would control the center of the ring with his questions,” said Serres, who now works at the Boston Globe. “He was just relentless.”

Faiza Mahamud, another former Star Tribune reporter, thanked Furst for serving as a mentor and protector, calling him the “family member I never knew I needed.”

He rarely lingered at his (messy) desk long, Mahamud said, and was passionate about elevating people not often quoted in the media.

“He was in the communities where a lot of white reporters are afraid of going into,” Mahamud said. “He was knocking on doors, doing journalism the way it should be done.”

In 2019, Furst wrote a profile of Sharif Willis, a former Vice Lords gang leader who worked to distance himself from his past and works to reduce violence in Minneapolis. Willis called Furst the ultimate professional.

“You had a broader community that sometimes had a bad taste in their mouth about people who they just didn’t know, and Randy gave understanding to what was going on in those peoples’ lives,” Willis said.

Furst said he was kicked out of buildings dozens of times and had doors slammed in his face plenty more.

In her speech at Furst’s retirement party, Simons praised his ability to get quotes at a tense protest that followed a police killing.

“While many could have reasonably read the scene as dangerous and bailed … Randy instead called me and said something along the lines of: ‘Boy, they do not like the Star Tribune! Anyway, here are some quotes,’” Simons said.

Asked what he plans to do in retirement, Furst said he is considering writing two books. One would be about a Minneapolis cold case he recently wrote about, one of his final Star Tribune bylines. Another would be about First Amendment issues.

“In some ways I’m sad,” Furst said. “I mean, this has been my entire life and I very much enjoyed what I’ve been doing. On the other hand, I’m kind of excited to try some other things.”