Greg Barron is a Peabody award winning reporter who worked in the MPR newsroom in the early 1970s.
June 5, 1975 - Edward Baretta, interviewee: Fluorocarbons and hydrocarbons used in propellants. Abuse of these propellents by teens who discover huffing gives a high, absorbing into the body at 15 to 20 percent in atmosphere cause fibrillation of heart, can't pump blood, heart failure and sometimes death. Experiments find not as much problem to general public as once thought. With normal use of spray cans no adverse effects. Traces of these elements in atmosphere.
June 5, 1975 - Small alternative K-6 school for difficult students (truant, personal problems) designed for close individual attention. Students are referred, close parent teacher relationship, parents provide support services including teaching courses. Relied on funding through Model Cities program, now this funding ends June 30, unlikely to get funding through public school system, school faces cutbacks. Steve Youngeward, school director; Diane brausberger, parent; Mike Rowan, Mpls Public Schools; Mary Kay Parron, Teacher Alternative education for bad kids, loss of funding.
July 16, 1975 - MPR’s Greg Barron reports on differences between men and women in insurance industry policies. Betty Howard, director of Women's Division of Minnesota Department of Human Rights, discusses the disparity between women and men in terms of obtaining insurance, particulary in the case of the newly divorced.
July 16, 1975 - An audio clip of Betty Howard, director of Women's Division of Minnesota Department of Human Rights, on the disparity in coverage and access to insurance between women and men.
October 11, 1975 - John Milhone, Minnesota Energy Agency director, is skeptical of the president?s energy proposal including a subsidy for crash construction of synthetic fuels by 1976. He says while there?s a need for additional capital for the development of energy sources we?ve learned that programs announced with a with a fanfare and big dollar tag are not necessarily effective. This reminds him of Project Independence, a plan to have the nation energy independent by 1980. That?s impossible and it will be difficult to be even partially independent by 1985. Splashy big investment programs are not a good substitute for a more realistic look at energy use and supply. We need to look at more effective conservation programs, such as a need to get better efficiency out of automobiles. We should spend funds on alternative transportation methods and mass transit programs. The railroads don?t get support they need. With retrofitting insulation in homes, business and industry for less money you could get more energy savings. It?s possible to consider conservation programs as economic investments in fuel. With limited public funds in the energy area more could be achieved by conservation than new supply development projects.
November 14, 1977 - Minnesota Public Radio presents reporter/producer Greg Barron’s “The Prairie Was Quiet,” a sound portrait of the American Prairie. MPR’s Dan Olson narrates the documentary as it recounts million year history of the prairie.
August 13, 1979 - Midday presents “The Way to 8-A,” a documentary sound portrait on the involuntary commitment to Hennepin County General Hospital's Ward 8-A, a psychiatric ward. Program looks at the people being committed, those doing the committing, the staff, and the entire process of involuntary commitment.
December 9, 2002 - On the prairies of southwest Minnesota, hundreds of wind turbines generate so much electricity that the state's largest utility, Xcel Energy, plans to build over a hundred miles of new transmission lines to bring power east to the Twin Cities. If the project is approved, it will be the biggest one built in Minnesota since a nationwide boom in transmission line construction ended twenty years ago. Some in the industry say now we need to build the next wave of transmission lines. But in Minnesota, many people remember a time when a powerline project went wrong. In the late 1970's, a mass protest swept through the normally conservative farm country of west central Minnesota. Farmers tried to stop construction of a 400 mile long transmission line that would cross their land on the way from North Dakota to the Twin Cities. In this special report, "Powerline Blues," MPR reporter Mary Losure looks back the conflict through the eyes of people who lived it. It's a story of how a system they didn't think was fair turned ordinary people into radicals.