Category: <span>~Uncategorized</span>

MPR reporter Sea Stachura is looking for help with five stories she’s working on (see below).

I got the following announcement email from her since I signed up for MPR’s Public Insight Network. Feel free to contact her directly if you’ve got some suggestions.

I wonder if the new publisher/editor of the Northfield News, Sam Gett, might consider encouraging his reporters to do something like this?

Hi. I’m Sea Stachura, the Rochester bureau reporter for MPR News. I’m writing to you because you are an important part of our Public Insight Network, and because you live in my part of the world, southeastern Minnesota.

At MPR, we do the best reporting when we partner with people who are living the issues and news we cover… people like you. I want to hear your comments, ideas and stories about the region, because you will always know more about your community than I do.

I’d also like to send you occasional updates on the stories I’m working on and the issues I’m considering. In return, I hope you’ll share what you know, offer your own ideas, or direct me to someone who might be a good resource.

I hope to expand my reporting on the Latino and Somali communities, the environment, and issues in Iowa (up to now, I’ve done little in Iowa). I’m open to ideas on any subject. Share your suggestions by clicking here.

Or, you can always contact public insight analyst Melody Ng directly at publicinsight@mpr.org with urgent information or thoughts on stories we should be covering.

I’m looking forward to hearing what you have to say. Thanks for participating.

Best,

Sea Stachura

Help me with these stories

A bunch of us locals have been pushing Web 2.0 stuff onto our fellow citizens since the launching of the civic blogosphere project back in the summer of 2004. The…

Yesterday, I spent an hour at the James Gang Hideaway visiting with Thor Henning Lerstad, News Director for the Norwegian Broadcasting Company (NRK). He’s visiting Minnesota this week to “study best-practice examples of Consultative/Participatory/Public Journalism.”

(Last September, I spent an hour at the James Gang Hideaway visiting with a colleague of his, Jørgen Jensen, a journalist with Danmarks Radio (DR), Denmark’s national broadcasting corporation. He also wanted to learn about all the citizen journalism/community media/civic blogosphere stuff we’ve been doing here in Northfield for the past decade.)

Northfield.org’s Anne Bretts was kind enough to pick him up in the Twin Cities and bring him to Northfield for the day… and return him. How’s that for Minnesota hospitality? I brought him to lunch at Northfield Rotary (“Hey, everybody, a real live Norwegian named Thor!”).

I’ve included Thor’s email to me and Anne below in case others are interested in what he’s up to. Now we just need a similar visit from a journalist in Sweden to complete a Scandinavia trifecta and maybe top it off with visits from journalists in the other Nordic countries of Finland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands.

I do consulting work for the Citizens League but I’ve also been a member since 1989. (They also were the fiscal agent for the grant that started the Utne Reader…

   St. Paul film director Ali Selim was at the Southgate Theater here in Northfield on Monday, introducing and then discussing the feature film Sweet Land for an audience of…

Another bad weekend for US armed forces in Iraq. See this NYTimes news story about 27 more deaths. And then I saw David and Pat Allen’s letter to the editor…

Last week (January 3rd) the Wall Street Journal had an article by John J. Miller (a writer for the National Review) that discussed the past, present and future purposes of…

I’ve closed the Jan 5th straw poll on ethanol. Not a bad response: 76 votes tallied on the question: “Do you support or oppose the proposed ethanol plant in Bridgewater…