Minneapolis is the county seat of Hennepin County, and larger of the Twin Cities, the 14th-largest metropolitan area in the United States, containing approximately 3.8 million residents. As of 2016, Minneapolis is the largest city in the state of Minnesota and 46th-largest in the United States with 407,207 residents. Minneapolis and Saint Paul anchor the second-largest economic center in the Midwest, behind Chicago.

American City Business Journals is an American newspaper chain based in Charlotte, North Carolina, owned by Advance Publications. It has a range of media including 40 primary metropolitan weekly publications, which reach 4 million readers with business community related news, and The Business Journals, which has daily news from those newspapers and other business news and information. It also controls the Street & Smith's Sports Group, which publishes motorsports periodicals, including SportsBusiness Journal, Sports Business Daily, five sports annuals, and The Sporting News. The company is the United States' leading publisher of NASCAR magazines, which includes NASCAR Illustrated and Scenedaily.com.

The Northern Lights Express (NLX) is a proposed higher-speed rail service running along the corridor between Minneapolis and Duluth primarily in the U.S. state of Minnesota. A portion of the line will run through neighboring Wisconsin to serve Duluth's "Twin Port" of Superior. Plans are to upgrade an existing BNSF Railway freight line to allow trains to travel at up to . The train service will provide an alternative to traveling Interstate 35 between Duluth and the Twin Cities or to other destinations along the line such as the casino in Hinckley.