Celebrating our relatedness across Minnesota
Feb 20, 2024
This month I am focusing on connection, specifically the bonds we at MPR are working diligently to grow across our magnificent state. Connection lives at the heart of our work. Our strength and resilience as Minnesotans are bound up in our interdependence, our interrelatedness.
It’s a point of pride that MPR serves a statewide audience and has staff members living and working across the state. We are so lucky to have talented colleagues with deep roots in communities throughout Minnesota. I recently got to travel through northwestern Minnesota with Kristi Booth, our Bemidji-based regional network director, and through northeastern Minnesota with Maria Isley, our Duluth-based regional network manager. Each of them showed me their slices of Minnesota and introduced me to people striving to make their communities stronger.
One of the main themes that kept rising to the surface of our conversations was broad appreciation of the news, information, and musical programming MPR provides and it gave me great pleasure to tell them that our goal is to ensure more Minnesotans have free access to that quality news, information, and music. Our commitment to double down on regional coverage comes at a time when local news has declined or disappeared entirely from many communities. With your support and regional partnerships, MPR is planning to expand and deepen our reach.
Our goal is to create an environment where fact-based news media organizations, wherever they are located in Minnesota, can both contribute to and benefit from what we’re collectively creating. So, if you live in Sleepy Eye, or Fergus Falls, or Marshall, or Cass Lake you are more likely to get news of value to you. It’s about providing more Minnesotans with reliable news that matters to them. Stories so authentic and near to the ground that you can feel/taste/hear them.
In our northwest swing, we focused on connecting with other broadcast radio operators across the region. We visited a truly independent rock music radio station with one owner/operator: KensFM (89.1 FM Fargo-Moorhead). We also crossed the state line to visit with our cousins at Prairie Public Broadcasting in Fargo. I felt fortunate to get some time with Director of Radio Bill Thomas, who was days shy of retiring after an almost 60-year career.
In Bemidji, Kristi and I were excited to visit Sarah Bignall, the CEO/General Manager of KAXE/KBXE Northern Community Radio, which is expanding its coverage with investments by the Blandin and Northland Foundations. Its Northern Community News Initiative will be building upon an already successful reputation for listening to the needs of the community and reflecting the diversity of life in northern Minnesota.
MPR News Native News Editor Leah Lemm and reporter Matthew Holding Eagle III, joined us in Cass Lake when we visited KOJB The Eagle (90.1FM), which is owned by the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe. We learned a ton from station manager Chris Bedeau and program manager Marie Rock, about their aspirations for serving their community and we tossed around a few ideas about how we might work together. Just up the road from there we visited with Leech Lake Tribal College President Helen Zaikina-Montgomery and Arts and Humanities Instructor Audrey Thayer. Audrey is the first Indigenous woman to serve on the Bemidji City Council. We heard about the school’s goals to serve even more students in the region and their desire to add a dormitory to their campus to ease the burden on some of their commuters.
My visit to Duluth was organized by Maria Isley and featured connections with key partners, some longstanding and some new. In addition to attending a heartwarming 40th anniversary celebration of the Duluth Superior Area Community Foundation, we also heard the Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra perform a piece by Duluth composer Wendy Durrwatcher. We have a long history of working with local composers and musicians. We also stopped by the opening night of an art exhibition at the American Indian Community Housing Organization. This exhibition explored the power of connection to nature, culture, spirituality, and Ojibwe realities (past and present) through Gordon Coons and Steven StandingCloud’s strikingly bold and meaningful Anishinaabeg Woodland symbolic imagery. The opening was featured on Art Hounds, and Leah Lemm was there capturing digital footage.
Connecting our whole state through news, music, and culture will continue to lead our work. I’ll close a with a message from the musical inspiration of Annie Humphrey who was recently featured in one of Leah Lemm's stories. When Leah asked, “What's different about this album than your past albums?”, the artist replied “I've been told that in Ojibwe, the word for wisdom translates to ‘the light in my bones’ in English…. But either way, that's what I believe, so that's my reality The light in your bones is your wisdom. And if wisdom is the light in your bones, that means it's penetrated so deeply into you that it actually makes your bones glow. Which to me, is so grand. I'm turning 57. And I'm climbing that fourth hill. I'm a young elder, but I'm climbing it. And the fourth hill, you can see the farthest. And I think that this record kind of reflects my horizon growing.”
MPR has been around about as long as Annie and we’re also striving to use our perch on the hill to see the farthest and expand our horizon to build a more vibrant and connected Minnesota. Thank you for being part of our work. I know that our connection makes us all stronger.
Duchesne Drew
President, Minnesota Public Radio
About Duchesne Drew
Duchesne Drew is Senior Vice President of American Public Media Group and President of Minnesota Public Radio. In this role, he leads the teams that produce MPR News, The Current, APM Reports and Marketplace. Additionally, he oversees YourClassical MPR as a part of Minnesota Public Radio.