Marshall Helmberger: Publisher of the Timberjay in Northeast Minnesota

I conducted the interview with Timberjay publisher Marshall Helmberger in his house, which he built in the early 1980s, near Soudan, Minn. The house is off the grid, the solar electricity made my recorder buzz so badly I had to unplug it and use my backup batteries (thus the rough start to the recording).

Helmberger fell into journalism by chance, but his paper quickly gained recognition as a force for powerful local investigative journalism (a rarity these days).

The Timberjay, which publishes three weekly editions out of three offices, doesn't earn much profit, he said. But it has reaped numerous journalistic accolades for public affairs reporting.

The interview was conducted May 7, 2011, near Tower, Minnesota.

The interview is available for download here: http://www.archive.org/details/MarshallHelmberger

The transcript is available here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/58719240/Marshall-Helmberger