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Media Releases
Community Voices: St. Paul's Rondo Neighborhood, Moving Forward
"It’s a powerful experience to give voice to people who aren’t heard on their terms, sitting in their neighborhood and from their point of view on ways they are moving forward following this story." - Kate Moos, Director, News Content Development
Philando Castile, a 32-year-old black man, was killed during a traffic stop in Falcon Heights, MN on July 6th, 2016. Minnesotans, especially the Rondo neighborhood of St. Paul where Castile grew up and worked, were deeply impacted by his death.
MPR's Counter Stories team paired with Tom Weber to take their regular conversation "by people of color, for people of color" to the neighborhood most deeply affected by Mr. Castille's death. On August 10 they broadcast a live show from the Golden Thyme Coffee & Cafe, in the center of the Rondo neighborhood.Members of St. Paul’s African-American community and their allies joined Tom Weber and Counter Stories co-hosts Anthony Galloway, Luz Maria Frias, Don Eubanks and Hlee Lee for a conversation about whether and how events like the Philando Castile shooting move Minnesota toward racial awareness and change.Community elders like Macalester College professor Mahmoud el-Kati and leaders like St. Paul Central High School principal Mary Mackbee joined with Rondo community members in a the discussion.
Nancy Cassutt began her role as Executive Director of MPR News earlier this year. She stepped in to lead a successful, well-established newsroom at a time when disruptive technology is a daily challenge for journalists. But while the media landscape constantly shifting, Cassutt knows one thing for sure: our communities must see and hear themselves reflected in our programming or we're not carrying out the mission of public radio."These relationships and connections are critical as we build more content around community-centered needs and voices," says Cassutt. "[MPR] dropped an ISDN line at the Golden Thyme for future use. We will definitely be back!" 
Unity, Healing and Gratitude: The Work of Classical MPR's Bridge of Song
There's a culture of gratitude at APMG.It often shows up in the form of an all-staff email from one of our leaders, calling out a team or an individual's great work. While many of us have a love/hate relationship with email, our employees are spread all over the U.S. (and beyond). We work 24/7. We can't always connect in-person, so we use the available tools.Below are two great examples, highlighting Classical MPR's Bridge of Song, an evening of song and reflection after recent violence in the Twin Cities, Dallas, Baton Rouge and other communities. Our work touches many lives... and of course, our own. We are emotionally involved and we hope this translates to the audience.
All-Staff Email From Dave Kansas, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer on July 15, 2016: Earlier this week, Brian Newhouse, head of our Classical Music group, saw that Dallas planned to do a community sing July 14 to bring people together as that city tries to come together following the recent shooting of police officers. He immediately imagined that our own community, grappling with the police shooting of Philando Castile, could potentially join up with Dallas and create an event that connected two places and their people at a crucial time. Brian wrote: “Music and beauty are powerful agents of unity. And if enough of us make that so, if enough of us declare that we seek to make the world a better place with the tools at hand... that's what we need now. So...”
Following that “So…” Brian and many others across the organization came together to pull off a great event in short order. Similar to how we responded to the untimely passing of Prince, we moved nimbly to provide an important space and moment for our community.All that effort culminated when Classical MPR packed Westminster Presbyterian last night with nearly 1800 people who wanted to join our “Bridge of Song” event. The event provided time in these tumultuous days for our community to rest, grieve, seek hope, and connect through singing. We fed it to Facebook Live as well, and thousands from all over the country and beyond joined in via that feed.All this to get at the essence of the MPR mission:
“…to enrich the mind and nourish the spirit, thereby enhancing the lives and expanding the perspectives of our audiences, and assisting them in strengthening their communities.”
The magic moment in the evening was a literal ‘bridge of song’ in which the Westminster crowd – linked via audio/video – sang the same song of hope with the crowd gathered at the companion event in Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas. If you missed it, it’s all here: http://www.classicalmpr.org/story/2016/07/15/bridgeofsong-helps-create-community-bonds
Along with thanking Brian, I want to thank and recognize for extraordinary, high-speed work:
- Classical: Vaughn Ormseth, Tesfa Wondemagegnehu
- The entire Operations team, especially Zack Rose, Erik Stromstrad, and Corey Schreppel
- Digital: Brett Baldwin, Luke Taylor, Dan Nass, Nate Ryan
- Marketing and PR: Jen Keavy, Angie Andresen, Jill Weflen; and Creative Services for design work
- Legal and Business Affairs: Christie Healy, Char Arends
- Live Events: Jeff and Ellie, Rose Martin
- Community Engagement: Ka Vang
All-Staff Email from Randi Yoder, Chief Development Officer on July 15: It was a remarkable evening, full of beautiful music, harmony and surprise appearances – all made possible because we have deep relationships in the community that give us the opportunity to call on short notice and make wonderful things happen.
Imagine the joy of singing in concert with an equally engaged group in Dallas. I was so proud to see Brian, Tesfa, Dessa and others attached to us, at the front of the room. And the applause for these folks who are highly recognized in our community went on and on. Thank you, team, for making this very special event possible for so many to enjoy and be a part of it. On the way out I heard someone say: “ these days, we need one of these every day!”
The Power of Listening: Audience, Employees, and Community Partners Tackle Women's Financial Security
Written by Linda Miller Director, Network Journalism and InclusionMPR News recently partnered with the Twin Cities chapter of the National Association of Black Accountants (NABA) to host Women Empowering Women: A Conversation About Financial Security at MPR's UBS Forum in downtown St. Paul.The idea for the June 29 event came from a Public Insight Network questionnaire that asked women how they are doing financially and what would help them do better. We heard from women working to overcome student loan debt, pay for childcare, save for retirement, live within their means, confront bias in the workplace, and have difficult conversations with loved ones about finances. We also heard from women with a lot of knowledge to share - about setting financial goals, creating budgets, negotiating a raise and eliminating credit card debt.Their insights sparked interesting on-air conversations with MPR listeners – something that is common for PIN sources to do. But when we asked the 170+ women what they wanted, the response, overwhelmingly, was to be in conversation with other women.Convening conversations is something that is second nature to MPR. Our show hosts do this every day, as do our digital and social media producers. And we have a strong track record of hosting community engagement events like Policy and a Pint, Talking Volumes, the Top Coast Festival and Conversations on the Creative Economy.Most often we invite authors, academics, journalists, politicos, pundits, thought leaders or other authoritative experts to answer questions, provide commentary and, in some cases, dole out advice. Here, however, women were asking for something different: an opportunity to learn from each other.To understand how a conversation like this might play out, we used the questions from the PIN survey to spark discussions among professionals at MPR through our Women's Employee Resource Group. Our conversations were deep, illuminating and cathartic, and many of us learned more about each other in two hours of conversation than we had in years of working together.Inspired, we reached out to our friends at NABA and asked if they would co-sponsor an event and help recruit their members to attend. About 25 women of diverse professional and personal backgrounds signed up and showed up, including a few MPR employees.
Arts reporter Marianne Combs, co-chair of the MPR Women’s ERG, and PIN engagement and inclusion manager Annie Anderson facilitated the two-hour-long workshop, which started with networking and a Jamaican dinner catered by Pimento in Minneapolis. We did not record the event for broadcast, live-blog, stream or tweet it. But we did establish some values to guide our discussions:1) Everyone is an expert in her own lived experience.2) Everyone has insight to share.3) When you are curious, you cannot be judgmental.4) To be inclusive means to listen.We spent an hour circulating among tables labeled with topics the women most wanted to discuss, starting each conversation by sharing stories about steps we had taken to better understand or improve our financial futures.We spoke about our relationship to money and the role money plays in our relationships. We talked about debt, divorce, and online tools for creating and maintaining a household budget. We talked health care, retirement planning and philanthropy, about obstacles we are facing and hardships we have overcome. And we talked about how to talk about all of these things with children, parents and spouses.At the end of the night, we reflected on what we had learned and pledged to take one more action, write it down in a “memo to self,” and seal it in a self-addressed envelope to be mailed back to us in 30 days. Several women lingered to continue their conversations and swap contact information, and many have since offered written feedback on the event itself.“It was really incredible to speak with other women and hear about their struggles,” wrote 31-year-old Kristin Campbell of Minneapolis. “Money is one of those things that no one talks about so it's easy to assume you're the only person who's made poor choices or been through rough times or that those times are permanent. Here was a group of women in various stages of their lives, all who have struggled and worked and made their financial situations better.”“It was reaffirming that most women seem to want the same thing--to have financial independence and to give back,” wrote Elizabeth Dickinson, a 56-year-old life coach and writer.Andrea Jauli, 28, said she learned a lot from the older women about planning for kids and retirement, and she has since connected with women she met at the event. Next time, she suggested, build in more time for women to network.Speaking of next time, all of the women who have provided feedback so far would like MPR to host more events like this on topics ranging from gender equality at work to parenting for safety to empowering female heads of households to cultivating a practical spirituality.One of my big takeaways is that, by creating safe spaces for people to share their insights, especially on taboo topics like finances, Minnesota Public Radio can create learning opportunities with the potential to change the way we relate to one another. The experience also reaffirmed the founding principle of PIN®: It’s amazing what people will tell you if you bother to ask, and remarkable what we all can learn if we take the time to listen.
Linda Miller became a journalist in the small towns of Wyoming, where newspapers were pieced together with hot wax and held together by trust, transparency and a partnership with readers. As the Director of Network Journalism and Inclusion, she is still helping journalists deepen relationships with the communities they serve, albeit with better technology.