Canoeing the Mississippi on the radio

I don't spend much time "on air" in my job. I'm more comfortable calling the shots on the other side of the glass from the microphones. But the latest place-based project at Minnesota Public Radio was my idea and I took the opportunity to voice one of the stories myself.

During the week the Ken Burns documentary "The National Parks: America's Best Idea" aired on PBS, I wanted to air stories about the National Park Service sites in Minnesota. Five days, five parks -- how perfect.

The full series is here. Three of our reporters in greater Minnesota were nice enough to be part of the project and they made three surprising stories about places I think most of our neighbors don't even realize exist in our state: Voyageurs National Park (which still has a tense relationship with its neighbors), Pipestone National Monument (which still offers a working -- and sacred -- rock quarry) and Grand Portage National Monument (which is a grand experiment in dual management -- half federal government, half Native American tribe).

Last Friday, on the last day of the series, I went into the broadcast booth to talk about my experience in Minnesota's most unusual National Park site, the Mississippi National River and Recreation area (which has virtually no land of its own, but enviable access to millions of visitors). Here's the audio:

I know this is broadcasting rather than placecasting, but there is a close relationship and the same qualities of presentation, information and surprise are key to both. But with broadcasting, it's more important to paint pictures for the audience and include sound to put them in the location. (With placecasting, of course, they're already there!) In this case, the sound of kids having a blast in the canoes is priceless.

Oh yeah...the fifth park is the St. Croix National Scenic River. We share that one with Wisconsin (kinda like Brett Favre, eh?). We didn't send a reporter there, but we had a good phone conversation with one of the rangers there.

(image from MPRNewsQ.org)