Tick. Tick. Tick.

Three sounds.

That's all it takes to transport me back to my great-grandparents' living room on a Sunday evening.

My great-grandfather was a retired police officer who loved television. Game shows were his favorite, but every Sunday at 6:00 p.m., everything stopped. He would quietly rise from his recliner, walk across the room and turn on 60 Minutes. As a child, I didn't understand investigative journalism or the role of the press in a democracy. I simply knew that if Grandpa stopped everything to watch this program, it must be important.

Years later, my husband and I carried that tradition into our own home.

Our family always ate dinner together, but Sunday nights were different. Dinner moved from the kitchen table to the family room so we could watch 60 Minutes. From the time he was about six years old, my oldest son would ask, "Are we watching 60 tonight?" If it was Sunday evening, the answer was always yes.

Our kids quickly learned the house rule: we don't talk during 60 Minutes. Commercials were fair game. The stories deserved our full attention.

Even in an era when nearly everything can be streamed or recorded, we still watched it live at 6:00 p.m. There was something meaningful about knowing millions of other Americans were sitting down at the same moment to learn about the world beyond their own neighborhoods.

Looking back, I realize those Sunday evenings shaped more than a family tradition. They awakened my own love for journalism

I eventually earned both undergraduate and graduate degrees in journalism. My career began in magazine publishing before taking me into corporate communications, but my journalism training has never left me. It shaped how I think, how I ask questions and how I solve problems. I still believe that if you can communicate clearly—if you can gather facts, understand multiple perspectives and tell the truth with precision—you can do just about anything.

Perhaps that's why the changes surrounding 60 Minutes have affected me more than I expected.

For more than half a century, the program represented the gold standard of investigative journalism. Recent resignations, questions about editorial independence and concerns over ownership influence have left many longtime viewers wondering whether one of journalism's most respected institutions can remain what it has always been. Whether every concern proves justified is almost beside the point. Once people begin to question whether journalism can operate independently, something valuable has already been weakened.

When Steve Grove became CEO and publisher of The Minnesota Star Tribune in 2023, I was genuinely hopeful. A Northfield, Minnesota, native with experience in Silicon Valley and public service, he spoke about building a newspaper that served not only Minneapolis and St. Paul, but the entire state. It felt like a fresh vision for what local journalism could become.

That vision was tested this past winter during Operation Metro Surge. As federal immigration raids unfolded across Minneapolis, the Star Tribune documented what was happening on the ground with the kind of thorough, accountable reporting that only local journalists can provide. It was exactly the kind of work a free press exists to do: bear witness, ask difficult questions, verify the facts and give citizens the information they need to understand what is happening in their own communities.

So I was surprised when the paper announced a 15 percent workforce reduction and revealed it was exploring a new ownership model that would place the newspaper under foundation ownership. My first reaction was sadness. I assumed it was another sign that local journalism was slowly disappearing.

Then I learned that foundation ownership is an attempt to rethink a business model that has been under pressure for decades. Rather than existing primarily to generate returns for shareholders, a foundation-owned newspaper exists to preserve its mission. The paper still has to earn subscriptions, attract advertisers and operate responsibly. But success is measured differently. The goal is to sustain quality journalism for the community, not maximize profits for owners.

It's not an entirely new idea. Newspapers including The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Salt Lake Tribune and the Tampa Bay Times have already embraced variations of this model. None has solved every challenge facing journalism, but each represents an effort to preserve something worth protecting rather than accepting its decline as inevitable.

Though that changed my perspective, I'm still concerned about the future of journalism. Local newspapers continue to shrink. Trust in the media remains deeply divided. The economics of reporting are harder than ever. Meanwhile, countless independent journalists are producing important work, but the rise of individual voices also raises important questions. Who pays them? What incentives shape their reporting? How do readers evaluate rigor, transparency and accountability when there are no longstanding editorial institutions behind the work?

These aren't simple questions and I don't pretend to have all the answers.

What I do know is this: democracies need independent journalism. They need reporters willing to ask difficult questions regardless of who holds power. They need editors committed to evidence, accuracy and transparency. They need organizations that value truth more than outrage.

The United States has often been called "The American Experiment," and for good reason. When our founders added freedom of the press to the First Amendment, they understood that a free press would serve as an essential check on power and that democracy would depend upon informed citizens. And it has for 250 years.

If we want that experiment to continue, we can't simply mourn the institutions we fear we're losing. We have to invest in the future of journalism itself.

That's why I recently purchased a family subscription to The New York Times. It's why I finally became a sustaining member of MPR after years of meaning to do it. I wanted my family to have access to thoughtful reporting, and I wanted to support the journalists producing it.

Perhaps that's one of the most important lessons we can teach our children: Not simply how to consume to news but why journalism matters.

Because somewhere, another six-year-old is sitting beside a parent or grandparent, captivated by a story that helps explain the world. And decades from now, that child may remember the sound of a stopwatch ticking—and understand that what was really being passed from one generation to the next wasn't a television program.

It was a belief that the truth is worth searching for and that a free press is worth protecting.