As a decades long staple to the listening audience, Morning Edition combines a host program in St. Paul and NPR hosts in Washington and Los Angeles, bringing news from overnight and information throughout the state and world. Programming includes reports and interviews.
April 22, 1996 - Mainstreet Radio’s Mark Steil reports that some citizens in southeast Minnesota are upset the Department of Natural Resources has spent a million dollars to buy a farm bordering the Mississippi River. DNR officials counter the land is worth protecting, calling it a scenic treasure state residents will be able to enjoy forever.
May 15, 1996 - Mainstreet Radio’s Catherine Winter caught up with the Rolling Plains Gallery as it made a stop on Minnesota's Iron Range. The mobile art gallery has paintings bolted to the inside of a semi trailer. The Plains Art Museum in Fargo saw it as a unique solution to the problem of art galleries being few and far between in rural Minnesota, where residents don't often get to see works by professional artists.
May 28, 1996 - Mainstreet Radio’s Leif Enger reports of an emerging safety issue in rural Minnesota…a lack of firefighters. Even as demands for fire protection rise, the number of volunteers is shrinking; in many communities there are barely enough firefighters to answer a call for help.
May 29, 1996 - MPR’s Eric Friesen speaks with The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra Conductor Hugh Wolff from the city of Sendai shortly after the second concert of a tour in Japan. The trip is being seen as an important opportunity to develop a Japanese following for the SPCO. Wolff says Japanese audiences have given the SPCO a warm welcome.
June 11, 1996 - About 400 North Minneapolis residents attended a raucous community meeting to discuss the recent slayings of 11-year-old Byron Phillips and 22-year-old Derrick Adams. Phillips and Adams were shot to death about a half block away from each other, in the space of a week. Police have no suspects as of report.
June 17, 1996 - As U.S. farmers are getting older and the high price of starting an agricultural operation increases, Mainstreet Radio’s Mark Steil reports on a Minnesota program based in Granite Falls that is making efforts to get young farmers in the business. The hope is that by matching beginning farmers with established farmers, farm ownership can gradually be transferred to a new generation.
June 24, 1996 - Mainstreet Radio’s Leif Enger reports on ‘fiber farming’ in Minnesota. Northern Minnesota farmers are trying to grow and harvest hybrid poplar trees as a new source of pulp for the paper industry and even a possible savior of Minnesota forestlands.
July 3, 1996 - Mainstreet Radio’s Leif Enger visits the central Minnesota town of Crosby, which is having a comeback of sorts…from prospering former mining town to bustling “antique” town. Those windows now contain 40 antique stores. Locals are hoping the recovery expands to other businesses for community.
August 7, 1996 - Mainstreet Radio’s Rachel Reabe visits the Great Lakes School of Log Building, where students learn the basics of log construction by doing it. The only full time, year round log building school in the country operates out of the woods near Ely in northeastern Minnesota.
August 13, 1996 - Mainstreet Radio’s Leif Enger reports that a state park campground built among Indian burial mounds is being moved and reopened in a new location. Almost immediately after the campground at Mille Lacs Kathio State Park was constructed in the 1960s, it was learned the campsites were situated in a Mdewakanton Dakota cemetery dating back to the 1600s. Years later, efforts to right a wrong are being completed as the campground is relocated off the Native sacred ground.