After a series of spirited internal debates, we've decided that we will be taking political ads. Political candidates or groups can buy ads on the Southwest Voices newsletter or website.

Why are we doing this? Because we think local news is important, and it deserves more funding. Large corporate media outlets in the Twin Cities, including major newspapers, TV stations, and radio stations already accept political advertising. Many other local news sources already do as well. Facebook and Google make hundreds of millions of dollars every election cycle off of political ads. Political advertising represents a large chunk of the digital advertising pie, and if we want local news to survive, we should not only be comfortable with local news outlets running political ads, but we should be encouraging campaigns to spend their money with local sources of information as well.

We will keep our editorial and sales teams completely separate, as we do with all of the advertising that we receive. Obviously, advertising sales will not have any impact on our editorial content.

“Southwest Voices reserves the right to accept or decline any advertisement or letter to the editor it is offered. We will decline to accept advertising that we know or believe to be overtly negative, misleading, inaccurate, fraudulent, or illegal. For political ads, this includes personal attacks on another candidate or use of unflattering photos of their opponent."

Please reach out with any questions or concerns.