Who we are

Minnesota Nice News LLC, referred to here as we and us, publishes minnesotanicenews.com, The Landing (our weekly newsletter for members), and, starting January 2027, a free monthly print edition. We are a for-profit Minnesota limited liability company. Our mailing address is 16642 Hightop Way NW, Cass Lake, MN 56633. For anything on this page, use the form on Reach the Newsroom and choose “Privacy or my data.”

What this page covers

This page is about information we collect from you as a reader, member, or advertiser: your email address, your billing details, which pages you visited. That is data, and everything below explains what we do with it.

It is not about what we publish. Names, ages, photographs, and details inside our stories, online or in print, are editorial decisions, and those are governed by our Editorial Standards. If you want something in a published article changed or taken out, ask through Reach the Newsroom. We honor reasonable requests, and we decide them on editorial grounds rather than under this policy.

What we collect

Your IP address, browser and device type, the pages you visit, and where you came from. Standard server logs. We don’t try to identify you and we can’t.

Nothing. We know how many copies went to each store and how many were left at the next drop. We don’t know who took one, and we like it that way.

Your name, email, and billing details. Your membership includes The Landing, so your email address also goes on our newsletter list, and our email provider records whether a message was opened and whether a link was clicked. Payment card numbers are handled entirely by Stripe and never touch our servers. We see the last four digits and the transaction record, nothing more.

Everything above, plus a mailing address so we can send you the first issue off the press, and the name, logo, and link you want on the supporters page and in your yearly print ad.

Business or personal contact information, billing details, and the ad itself: the words, the artwork, and any photos you send. The ad is published. A classified runs in the paper and online with whatever contact details you chose to put in it, so include only what you want strangers to see. Once an issue is printed, it can’t be called back.

Whatever you choose to include, which is typically your name, contact information, and the content itself.

An obituary carries details about the person who died and about every survivor named in it. A photograph carries the faces of everyone standing in it. None of those people wrote to us, and most will never know we have their information until they see it.

We publish that material, online and in print, keep it in the archive, and search engines index it. Send us information about someone else only if it is yours to send. Anyone named or pictured can ask to be taken out. We take it down online and leave it out of future issues; a paper already on the rack can’t be recalled. Because the material is published, that request goes to the editor under our Editorial Standards.

Social Security numbers, government ID numbers, health information, precise location, or anything about your political affiliation or religious practice. We have no reason to want any of it.

What we do with it

• Send The Landing to members.
• Process membership, advertising, and classified payments and issue receipts.
• Build your ad, send you a proof, and run it where you asked.
• Mail founding members the first issue.
• Answer you when you write to us.
• Understand roughly how many people read what, so we know whether this is working.
• Meet legal and tax obligations.

Nothing else.

What we do not do

We do not sell, rent, trade, or share your personal information. Not to advertisers, not to sponsors, not to data brokers, not to anybody. There is no arrangement under which this happens and no mechanism by which it could.

Advertisers and sponsors never receive member lists, email addresses, or any information about individual readers. Our editorial staff is not told who has become a member.

Cookies and analytics

Cookies are small files a site stores in your browser. We use two kinds, and only the first is on by default.

Keeps the site working: remembering your cookie choice, holding what you typed in a form, keeping members logged in, and basic security. When you pay, Stripe sets its own cookies on the checkout page to prevent fraud. These cannot be switched off and don’t tell us anything about you.

Tells us how many people read a story and roughly where they came from. Aggregate numbers, not names. Off until you turn it on.

You choose when the banner appears, and you can change your mind any time through the cookie settings on this site. Rejecting the optional cookies changes nothing about what you can read. Free articles stay free and members keep everything a membership opens. We do not use cookie consent as a condition of access to anything.

If your browser sends a Global Privacy Control signal, we read it as a rejection of analytics cookies and act on it without asking you again. Several states require this. We would do it anyway.

We use Google Analytics 4 to count readers. It only runs if you accept analytics cookies. It tells us page counts, rough geography, and referral sources. It does not tell us who you are, and we don’t combine it with anything else.

Because we let people reject analytics outright, our numbers undercount. We would rather have honest numbers about consenting readers than complete numbers about people who didn’t agree.

Our Legal page goes through the cookies on this site in more detail, including the ones set by embedded content from other companies.

Who else touches your data

We use a small number of service providers, each of which has its own privacy policy.

We share information with these providers only to the extent needed to run the service. We do not authorize any of them to use it for their own purposes.

We may also disclose information if legally required, meaning a court order, a subpoena, or a law we cannot avoid. If that ever happens and we are permitted to tell you, we will.

If this business is ever sold, merged, or handed to someone else, reader information goes with it. Any buyer would be held to this page as it stood on the day of the sale, and we would tell members by email before it happened.

How long we keep it

• Newsletter addresses while your membership is active, or until you unsubscribe. After that we keep the address on a suppression list, which is how our email provider makes sure you are never mailed again by mistake. Ask and we will delete it outright instead.
• Membership, advertising, and classified payment records for seven years, because tax law requires it.
• Founding members’ mailing addresses for the length of the founding membership, through 2029, or until you ask us to delete them.
• Classified ads come off the site when their month ends. Printed copies stay in the world, as paper does.
• Tips, letters, and submissions indefinitely, as part of our editorial archive.
• Server logs for 90 days.
• Analytics data for 14 months.

Your rights, wherever you live

You may ask us to tell you what we have about you, correct it, delete it, or send you a copy. Use the form on Reach the Newsroom and choose “Privacy or my data.” We will respond within 30 days and we won’t ask why.

Before we hand anything over or delete it, we confirm you are who you say you are. Usually that means replying to the address already on your account. We will not ask you to send a copy of your driver’s license.

Somebody else can make a request for you if you have authorized them in writing, and we may still check with you directly before we act on it.

If we turn a request down, write back and say so. A second look costs nothing and we will put our reasoning in writing. Some states require us to offer that appeal. It is open to everyone.

We will not treat you differently for asking. Exercising any of these rights will not change what you can read, will not affect a membership you have paid for, and will not change what you pay. If you ask us to delete your data while you hold a membership, tell us and we will explain what has to stay for us to keep your account working and to meet our tax obligations. You can also just cancel, and then ask.

Unsubscribing from The Landing is faster than any of this: one click at the bottom of every email, no login, no survey. It stops the emails. It doesn’t cancel your membership.

If you are in the EU, UK, or EEA

We are a small news organization in northern Minnesota. We don’t market to Europe and don’t expect many European readers. But if you are one, the General Data Protection Regulation applies and you have the following rights: access, rectification, erasure, restriction of processing, data portability, objection to processing, and the right to withdraw consent at any time without affecting what was lawful before.

• Consent, for analytics cookies.
• Contract, for memberships (including The Landing), advertising, and classifieds.
• Legitimate interests, for site security and understanding readership in aggregate.
• Legal obligation, for tax and accounting records.

Our servers and service providers are in the United States, so your data will be transferred and stored there. Our providers rely on Standard Contractual Clauses and comparable safeguards. If that is not acceptable to you, don’t join. You can read every new story for six days, and the current print issue online, without giving us anything.

Minnesota Nice News LLC, 16642 Hightop Way NW, Cass Lake, MN 56633. Reach us through Reach the Newsroom. We have not appointed an EU representative or a Data Protection Officer, as our processing does not meet the thresholds requiring either.

You may lodge one with your national supervisory authority. We would rather you emailed us first.

California and other states

Under the CCPA and CPRA, you have the right to know what personal information we collect, to request deletion, to request correction, and to opt out of sale or sharing.

We do not sell or share personal information as those terms are defined, and we never have. There is nothing to opt out of, and no opt-out link, because there is no program for one to disable. We run no advertising pixels, no ad exchange tags, and no retargeting of any kind, so no reader identifier leaves this site for anybody else to use.

We do not sell or share the personal information of anyone under 16, which follows from the fact that we do not sell or share anyone’s. We do not discriminate against anyone exercising these rights.

Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia, Texas, and several other states have consumer privacy laws with similar rights. If you live in one, the rights described above are available to you on the same terms: one email, no conditions. Minnesota’s own consumer data privacy law applies to businesses far larger than ours, but we extend the same rights regardless. The same goes for readers in North Dakota, where the paper also runs.

To make a request, use the form on Reach the Newsroom and choose “Privacy or my data.”

Children

This site is not directed at children under 13 and we don’t knowingly collect their information. You need to be 18 to buy a membership or place an ad or classified. Photographs of minors appear in our coverage, online and in print, under the rules in our Editorial Standards: we don’t publish a child’s full name without a parent or guardian’s permission, and we remove any photo of a child on a parent’s request, no reason required. If you believe we have information about a child under 13, tell us and we will delete it.

Security

We use HTTPS across the site, keep software current, limit access to member and advertiser data to the people who need it, and don’t store payment card numbers. No system is perfect. If a breach affects your information, we will tell you promptly and directly rather than burying it in a notice.

If you hold a membership, your password is yours to protect. Keep it to yourself, and tell us if you think somebody else has it.

We link to other sites: businesses we have written about, event pages, government sources. Once you leave, their privacy practices apply, not ours. We don’t control them.

We may update this page. Material changes will be announced by email to members and newsletter readers, and by notice on the site, at least 30 days before they take effect. The effective date at the top always reflects the current version.

Contact

Reach the Newsroom, and choose “Privacy or my data.” A person reads it.