Minnesota Star Tribune Publisher Steve Grove’s memoir set for release in June

Minnesota Star Tribune CEO and Publisher Steve Grove is coming out with a new book next summer, and the publishing company he is working with began accepting preorders on Monday.

The 288-page book, “How I Found Myself in the Midwest: A Memoir,” recounts Grove’s decision to leave Silicon Valley, where he spent 12 years as an executive at Google and YouTube, and return to his native Minnesota.

Grove served as commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development under Gov. Tim Walz before taking over as the leader of the Star Tribune, the largest news organization in the Upper Midwest, in April 2023.

“A passionate tribute to the power of moving forward by going back home,” reads a teaser on the Simon & Schuster webpage. “A Minnesota native son shares an urgent invitation to rediscover the grounding power of community through his story of leaving life in Silicon Valley to return to the Midwest.”

Grove, 47, said the book charts a “humbling and rewarding” experience in his life.

“It’s a story that’s been unfolding for me ever since our family moved from Silicon Valley to Minnesota six years ago, and I signed a contract with Simon and Schuster in 2023 to make it a book,” Grove said in an email. “My experience leaving a career at Google to join state government has been part of that journey, and it provided a special and unexpected view into the state I’d grown up in, but hadn’t lived in for 20 years. Reinventing my life in my forties has been a humbling and rewarding adventure, and it’s taught me a lot about building community, especially in a time of crisis.”

“We’re looking forward to publishing this moving memoir about home and reinvention, family and faith, and why community and coming together despite our differences is more important than ever,” said Stephanie Frerich, vice president and executive editor at Simon & Schuster.

Anytime a newsroom leader is willing to explain themselves more clearly to the public, it’s a positive for the industry, said Ellen Clegg, a Minnesota native who spent three decades at the Boston Globe, and co-authored the book “What Works in Community News,” which published earlier this year.

“I think it’s more important than ever to hear from media executives, from publishers, from people responsible for this very essential function of the press,” Clegg said. “Why did Steve Grove want to come in and lead the next generation of the Star Tribune?”

Grove is a native of Northfield and worked as a journalist for his hometown newspaper before stints with the Boston Globe and ABC News. But the graduate of Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, Calif., may be best known as the founding director of the Google News Lab and YouTube’s first news and politics director. Grove, who earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and economics and later a master’s degree in public policy analysis from Harvard, also led Google’s civic engagement work, which included the company’s nonpartisan voter information and get-out-the-vote efforts.

In 2018, Grove and his wife, Mary, relocated to Minnesota and a year later he went to work in the Walz administration. Grove became a familiar name and face to many Minnesotans as he was a consistent presence on radio, TV and in newspaper accounts during the COVID-19 pandemic and the impact it had on citizens and businesses, including many that were forced to temporarily close. At the same time, Grove was tasked with distributing billions of dollars in aid, making over unemployment insurance and redeveloping neighborhoods.

In the last week, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times have come under scrutiny after their publishers abruptly canceled presidential endorsements written by their opinion section.

The Minnesota Star Tribune announced in August that it would not endorse political candidates this year, instead choosing to “evaluate the key issues relevant to the most important contests, and offer readers a studied perspective on how they might view them at the ballot box,” according to opinion editor Phil Morris.

Clegg said a memoir is a unique approach for a publisher and could serve as a corrective measure to the “opaque statements” publishers often issue around their decision making.

Jeff Day contributed to this report.