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.
September 28, 1999 - Ron Offutt, aka Sultan of Spuds & the Lord of the Fries, grows more potatoes than anyone else in the world. The potatoes are perfect for French fries for fast food chains like McDonald's and frozen French fry processors like JR Simplot and Ore Ida. But Offutt’s success has a downside. Many people who live near Offutt's potato farms worry about the pesticides sprayed on his fields.....but they soon find they're up against a system much bigger than they are.
October 5, 1999 - MPR’s Mark Steil reports on the complicated nature of grain storage during the fall harvest, especially with the boom in genetically modified crops.
October 13, 1999 - Mainstreet Radio's Leif Enger shipped aboard a Bulgarian tramp freighter as it departed for Italy with a load of North Dakota wheat. Enger presents an understanding of sailor life aboard.
October 21, 1999 - MPR’s Bob Potter talks with architect Hugh Hardy, who designed Orchestra Hall. Hardy discusses the issue of acoustics and capacity. He says the new building might not have been built if the Lycium Theatre had been a little bigger.
October 21, 1999 - MPR’s Bob Potter talks with Jay Weiner, sports commentator and sportswriter for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, about his memories of former Minnesota Twins owner Calvin Griffith.
December 10, 1999 - In December 1998, a massive blast resulted in four deaths, about a dozen injuries and the displacement of several downtown St. Cloud businesses. Mainstreet Radio's Marisa Helms reports on the varied potential plans for developing site of the explosion that became an empty square piece of land in the heart of the city's downtown business district.
December 22, 1999 - MPR’s Marisa Helms reports on Kinpride, a cable-access show in St. Cloud that takes a closer look at homosexuality. The show's creator and host says the program is designed to educate people and, hopefully, lead to a greater acceptance of a wider range of lifestyles in Minnesota.
December 30, 1999 - David and Johanna Hecker are devout Christians who have been living for 22 years in Northeast Minnesota, on land they call God's wilderness. When they heard about the anticipated problems with Y-2-K, they advertised, offering to sell land to other Christian, home-schooling families, and help build cabins to avoid any millennial disruptions. Visitors arrived from all over the country. But as Mainstreet Radio's Amy Radil reports, things haven't quite worked out as the Heckers hoped.
May 12, 2000 - First there was the fish-cam, then the bear-cam…now visitors to the World Wide Web can see "Lake Superior Cam." A team of inventors have dropped a gadget into 30-feet of Lake Superior water just off Duluth. It will show anyone who's interested what's happening down there, 24 hours a day.
May 18, 2000 - MPR's Stephanie Hemphill presents a Mainstreet Radio report on how a rural school is keeping local history alive. At North Shore Elementary School, just north of Duluth, the whole community gathers to celebrate their history. They've created a new curriculum for the school, and they're publishing a book.