Above, Downtown Moorhead Inc. honcho Derrick LaPoint peruses a recent copy of The Extra. (Photo/Russ Hanson)

Nancy Edmonds Hanson
hansonnanc@gmail.com

The four cities that make up the Fargo-Moorhead metro area make beautiful music together. But each member of the choir, too, has its own distinctive voice – and The Extra aims to be the stage where Moorhead can sing its solos.
In the spirit of “Shop Small Saturday” — the national day highlighting support for local businesses built on a human scale – Moorhead’s weekly newspaper thanks you for being a part of our mission. Alone among all the F-M metro media, The Extra focuses on all that’s good on the right side of the Red River. Seven thousand readers who pick up their copies every week at hundreds of locations in Moorhead and Clay County, as well as in Fargo and West Fargo, help us spread the story of what makes our corner of the community a great place to live, learn and do business.
Moorheaders take for granted that we’re often little more than a footnote to the daily newspaper and broadcasters whose mandate is to cover the entire community. That grumbling goes back decades. The city was accustomed to its own newspaper from 1887 to 1957, when it was purchased and merged with the Fargo Forum. It was survived by a biweekly, the Red River Scene, which was published from 1953 to 1967, when The Forum bought it, too, and blended it into what was becoming a regional daily. The Scene was briefly succeeded by the Moorhead Valley Times, which lasted two years.
Other publications would come and go over the next decades. Originally titled the Clay County Extra, it was a monthly for two years, then a biweekly for several months before becoming a weekly newspaper – the first successful venture since the 1960s. In 2011 it was redesigned after its purchase by a small publisher of Upper Midwest community weeklies, New Century Press and became The Extra of today.
“We’re a feature newspaper,” editor Tammy Finney says. “With only one issue a week, we obviously can’t cover breaking day-to-day news. Instead, we focus on the’people’ stories that are overlooked so often by the big guys – the individuals and groups who make Moorhead our special home town.”
The Extra has grown over the years to audited circulation of 7,000 per week. This special edition is arriving in the mailboxes of 24,000 Moorhead residents. All of them do receive mailed copies twice a year, when households in 26 districts take their turn at free home delivery.
Advertisers make it possible to survive and thrive as a free weekly publication. Tammy says hundreds of businesses have cast a vote of confidence in Moorhead’s newspaper. Many are local businesses themselves in Moorhead and Clay County. Many on the west side of the Red River have also supported Moorhead’s newspaper, recognizing a unique way to tailor their messages to the 43,122 people of the Clay County seat as well as the 22,347 in the rest of the county.
Though often taken for granted, Moorhead itself is a substantial market in our region. If it were in North Dakota, it would be the fifth largest city, coming in just behind Minot and ahead of West Fargo. While it ranks 21st in Minnesota, most of the larger communities (with the exception of Duluth, Rochester and St. Cloud) are in the Twin Cities’ orbit.
The city of Moorhead has made The Extra its official newspaper, publishing its legal advertising in these pages. So has Moorhead Independent School District 152. The Clay County Commission publishes legals in The Extra one out of every four years, rotating them among the Moorhead paper and three much smaller publications in Ulen, Barnesville and Hawley.
“Our writers are people from here in Moorhead who are involved in the community every day,” editor Finney points out. In addition to yours truly, the contents include stories by Bryce Haugen and the Moorhead School District’s Pam Gibb, and columns by Moorhead City Manager Chris Volkers, MSUM President Anne Blackhurst, retired college and city leader Les Bakke, Clay County Extension Agent Randy Nelson, historian Davin Waits, Minnesota State Trooper Sgt. Jesse Grabow and homemaker Marlis Ziegler.
“We’re here to tell stories that might not otherwise get told,” Finney says, “and speak for people whose voices are overlooked too often by the ‘big guys.’ There are a lot of very positive things going on here right now. Moorhead’s future is looking brighter and brighter.”