St. Louis County Names Timberjay Official Newspaper for Board Proceedings

The St. Louis County Board designated the Timberjay as an official newspaper for county board proceedings in 2026, a decision that routes legal notices, delinquent real estate tax lists, and required financial publications through the Tower-based weekly and into households across the county's sprawling northern territory.

The board made the appointment at the same January session in which commissioners selected Mike Jugovich as board chair and Keith Musolf as vice chair. For a county that stretches from Duluth's suburbs to the Canadian border, the logistics of official notice publication carry real practical weight: residents in communities like Cook, Orr, Babbitt, and the townships north of Ely depend on the paper for the kind of government-record coverage that daily outlets based in Duluth rarely staff or schedule.

The Timberjay, headquartered at 414 Main Street in Tower, publishes every Saturday with a circulation of roughly 3,500. It already holds official newspaper status for the city of Tower and a cluster of townships including Vermilion Lake, Bearville, Morcom, Leiding, Eagles Nest, Field, Embarrass, Kabetogama, and Kugler. The county designation extends that accountability function upward to the board level, making its pages a required stop for anyone tracking the official record of county government from Floodwood north.

That accountability function is concrete. The paper's weekly cycle produces granular coverage that shapes decisions residents may not know are pending until they have already been made: land use ordinance changes, rezoning petitions near Lake Vermilion, road project funding, school budget votes, and natural resource permitting. A proposed county land use ordinance change, currently drawing pushback from northern residents, is exactly the category of story that gets lost without a local reporter assigned to county planning meetings.

For residents who want to use the Timberjay as a practical civic tool, the paper's website at timberjay.com carries current reporting, and the Tower office can be reached at 218-753-2950. Official county board notices, delinquent tax lists, and financial statements required by Minnesota statute will now run in its pages as a matter of law, not just editorial choice.