Who this covers

These terms apply to everyone who uses minnesotanicenews.com, reads our print edition, or receives our newsletter. Using the site means you accept them. Membership and advertising, including print advertising, have their own additional terms in the Subscription and Advertising Sales Agreement.

Where the Sales Agreement covers a subject this page also touches, the Sales Agreement controls on that subject and the rest of this page stands. Where the Privacy Policy covers what we do with your information, the Privacy Policy controls.

Age

You need to be 13 to send us something or create an account, and 18 to buy a membership or place an ad.

If you are under 13 and know about something good happening, have a parent or guardian send it to us.

What is free and what is not

Every new story is free to read for its first 6 days. No account required, no article limit, and we will not interrupt a story you have already started.

The print edition is free. It comes out on the first Sunday of every month, starting January 2027, and the current issue is free to read online too. Obituaries, community resources, weather, and the events calendar are free to read at any age.

A membership, $10 a year, covers the rest: articles tagged Featured, which are open to members from the day they publish; articles once they are 6 days old and move into the member archive; back issues of the print edition online; the weekly newsletter; and posting to the event calendar, which also includes submitting a writeup to run under your name in Community Calendar.

We may change what we publish, how it is organized, which parts require a membership, or whether a feature exists at all, at any time.

Newsletter

The newsletter goes out weekly and comes with a membership. Every email has a one-click unsubscribe that works immediately, with no login, no survey, and no explanation required. Unsubscribing from the newsletter does not cancel a membership. We don’t sell, rent, or share subscriber addresses. Details in the Privacy Policy.

What you send us

If you send a tip, photo, event listing, obituary, or letter, you are giving us permission to publish it, edit it for length and clarity, and keep it in our archive, online and in print.

You keep ownership of your photographs. You grant us a non-exclusive, perpetual, royalty-free license to publish and archive them, including in our print edition, our newsletter, on our social accounts, and in our podcast.

You confirm that what you send is yours to send, is accurate as far as you know, and doesn’t infringe anyone’s rights. Tell us if you don’t want your name used and we will honor that or decline to publish it.

Ask us to take down a photo you sent and we will take it down online and leave it out of future print issues. A print issue already on the rack cannot be recalled. Once your material is part of a published story, removing it is an editorial decision and it goes to the editor under our Editorial Standards.

If you send us something you did not have the right to send, and someone comes after us over it, you cover what it costs us to deal with that.

Anything sent to a public submission address may be published. If you need something kept off the record, say so before you tell us, not after.

Our content

All original reporting, photographs, graphics, logos, and design, online and in print, are the property of Minnesota Nice News LLC under United States copyright law.

Linking to our stories, including to members-only ones. Quoting briefly with credit. Sharing a print copy with a neighbor, which we encourage.

Republishing a full story, reprinting a page of the print edition, or using our photographs. Ask through Reach the Newsroom and choose “Permission to republish something.” Members-only articles are a separate decision, because republishing one outside the wall gives away what members paid for. Our full policy is on the Legal page.

Scraping, crawling, bulk reproduction, automated collection of any kind, circumventing a membership wall or sharing credentials to get past one, taking print copies in bulk for resale or disposal, or using our content to train machine learning models without a written agreement.

Copyright complaints

If you own something published here and it went up without your permission, write legal@minnesotanicenews.com or send mail to Copyright Agent at the address below. Include:

• Your signature. Electronic is fine.
• The work you say was infringed.
• Where on our site or in which print issue it appears, specifically enough that we can find it.
• Your name, address, phone, and email.
• A statement that you believe in good faith the use was not authorized.
• A statement, under penalty of perjury, that your information is accurate and that you are the owner or are authorized to act for the owner.

If we take something down and you believe we got it wrong, send a counter notice to the same address with your signature, what came down and where it was, your contact details, a statement under penalty of perjury that it came down by mistake, and your consent to the federal court where you live. We may put it back after 10 business days unless the person who complained files suit first.

We close the accounts of repeat infringers.

Behave reasonably

Don’t attempt to breach, overload, or interfere with the site. Don’t impersonate us or our staff. Don’t submit anything unlawful, defamatory, or harassing. Don’t work around a block we have put in place.

Suspending access

We can suspend or close an account, with or without notice, for sharing credentials, reversing a payment, getting around a membership requirement, or anything else in the section above.

Suspension is not cancellation. If we close a paid membership for one of these reasons, the Sales Agreement covers what happens to the money.

Links out

We link to other sites: businesses we have written about, event pages, government sources. We don’t control them and aren’t responsible for their content or their privacy practices.

Accuracy, and what we are not

We work hard to be accurate and we correct our mistakes visibly, online right away and in the next print issue. But the site and the paper are provided as-is, without warranty of any kind.

Event details change, and a print issue stays on the rack all month. Confirm with the organizer before you drive.

We publish only good news and do not cover crime, courts, politics, or emergencies, online or in print. We are not a complete record of what happens in this region and should not be treated as one. In an emergency, call 911.

Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Minnesota Nice News LLC is not liable for any indirect, incidental, consequential, or punitive damages arising from your use of the site or the print edition. Our total liability will not exceed $100 or the amount you have paid us in the past 12 months, whichever is greater.

Corrections

Tell us through Reach the Newsroom and choose “A correction to a story.” Every request gets a real answer. Corrections to print stories run online right away and in the next print issue.

Formal retraction demands under Minn. Stat. § 548.06 go to legal@minnesotanicenews.com and to the mailing address on our Legal page.

Changes to these terms

We may update this page. Material changes take effect 30 days after posting. The effective date at the top reflects the current version.

Using the site after that date means you accept the new version. If you would rather not, stop using the site and cancel any membership before the date arrives.

Governing law

Minnesota law. Venue in Cass County, Minnesota.

After you stop using the site

Cancel a membership or close the tab and most of this page stops applying to you. These parts keep running: anything you owe us, the license you gave us in what you sent, our ownership of our own work, the limitation of liability, and governing law.

Contact

Most questions go through Reach the Newsroom. Formal legal notices go to legal@minnesotanicenews.com and to the address below.