October’s Westminster Town Hall Forum Was a Public Media Love Fest

The Westminster Town Hall Forum addressed public media was a center-left love fest. This happened one day after the federal money stopped going to Twin Cities Public Television (TPT) and Minnesota Public Radio (MPR).

Lawyer Sylvia Strobel runs TPT. Long-time journalist Duchesne Drew runs MPR. One-time Minneapolis mayor R.T. Rybak, president of the Minneapolis Foundation, moderated a conversation on October 2nd between the two media chiefs.

At 12:00pm the audience was made up of core demographic of age 55 and older. Grey hairs abounded in the stylish and old-school brown wooden pews.

After the introductions, in her opening remarks Sylvia Strobel, the chief of TPT emphasized crisis and hope, erring toward the latter. In Duchesne Drew’s remarks he emphasized that recission had taken $6-million from MPR’s budget. And that his shop is the second largest newsroom in Minnesota after the “Minnesota Star Tribune”.

MPR strives to add more members. One part of this is via its reverb initiative which intends to make stories appeal to younger audiences. Drew described the Native News Initiative as another venture meant to increase coverage and respect and reflect Minnesota’s cultural diversity.

Among the audience questions which Rybak relayed to the chiefs was about any liberal bias, and why people in the Iron Range may see nothing in TPT or MPR which attracts them. Another vital question: should taxpayers help to pay for public media?

What was resolved was that the Strobel, Drew, Rybak and much of the aged audience believed that public media works and serves their readers and listeners well.