“He was in Connecticut connecting with local listeners and I didn’t feel any compulsion to do anything other than talk about international issues,” Dankosky said.

His show, “Where We Live,” is a local call in talk show that stretches the word local. While he makes sure that every show has some connection to Connecticut (Ambassador Moustapha was there on a lecture tour) Dankosky dismisses the idea that “local” listeners care only about “local issues.”

“In actuality if you go up to them on the street they’ll say they care about the Iraq war, the economy, they care about this presidential election. Pretty far down the list is this school budget in West Hartford.”

He pauses.

“People really care about these connections on national and international issues.”

Two years ago WNPR switched from Classical/News to News/Talk. Creating his show was an important part of the switch. Dankosky started with a fragmented crew who pull shifts elsewhere in the station. It wasn’t until recently that his senior producer, Catie Talarski, came on full time. “Where We Live” also steals a technical director and part time producer from other duties.

But a huge asset, Dankosky says, is his newsroom, a half dozen of “the best reporters in public radio” who feed show ideas and appear on the show to provide informed insight on current affairs.

In fact, most of the show’s topics center around stories generated from the newsroom. But then there are the shows on fair trade or the shows he does after each major presidential contest where he snatches pundits from local universities and recently grabbed sound from the PRX election archive.

“It’s trying to have a conversation each day that has some impact locally but also broadening out the larger issues. It’s a combination of local officials talking about very Connecticut-centric things and national authors and other folks trying to put things in larger context.”

Dankosky says part of WNPR’s motive for creating this blend of local, national, and international is to prepare for the day when–according to Dankosky–networks market directly to Connecticut listeners through the web and satellite.

“We have to make things that are all our own. Something that has this local and global connection that people here are really going to like because if we don’t have that then we’re irrelevant. We have to do that.”

But this fear that networks would eventually bypass member stations hasn’t forced Dankosky to join the din of other talk shows clamoring over the typical national fodder. He has so far avoided talking about Jeremiah Wright, for example. Instead, this election year has focused on local news makers talking about national issues. For instance, they have invited all of Connecticut’s federal candidates to their studio to take questions from callers on a range of national and international topics.

Here, Dankosky is happy, weaving a new dimension to local news that always looks global.

Readers and fans can listen to the full interview with John Dankosky in the flash player below. You can hear his show here.

So far the national media has been devoid of context so we are offering everything raw but still in a usable way. I urge stations to resist going after the usual sound bites, much will be lost if you do. If you listen to as much as you can I think you will find Wright to be clear-minded and very funny at times.

So far I have seen very little MSM discussion on this. Shame on us.

Wright believes this controversy and criticism against him is actually an attack against the black church. Here, Obama artfully/despicably dodges by saying that the black church is one of “struggle” and that instead of “black liberation theology” he uses “social gospel.”

Just looking at polling data (and to some degree the tactics of the other campaigns) race will be a deciding issue. I hope local stations can raise the timbre of the discussion. Question local religious scholars, black church leaders, and others in the black community. Find out how much race will actually matter in your state come November.

Also, we have WHYY’s now famous interview with Bill Clinton on “the race card”

Again, everything in the PRX archive is available free to public media producers. If you want a tour of our collection or story ideas, get in touch.

Obama’s concession in Evansville is here.

Everything is annotated and of course free. Happy broadcasting!

Coal is her most salient position–trying to blend energy independence, economic concerns, with the environmental core of the Democratic party. In the interview Clinton says, yes, she supports a moratorium on new coal plants. In another interview with West Virgina Public Radio, Clinton ducks and dodges questions of mountaintop removal.

Don’t know for sure, but I wonder how friendly Clinton is to coal staters. But I bet newsrooms out there can find the answer. Go to coal mines, steel plants, environmentalists, and everyday energy users and ask them the questions Clinton wouldn’t answer.

And if you do a story, post it to PRX! Here’s some other resources to help out:

• Here’s a uber-quick gloss of coal in the US
• Here’s an interview Clinton did with (liberal-leaning) Salon.com about the environmental impact of coal
• Here’s Clinton delivering her energy policy
• And here’s McCain’s energy policy
• (sorry, no Obama. But if you have it, post it!)

• Health Care (Obama & Clinton)
• Foreign Policy
• Economy (Obama & Clinton)
• Or all of our speeches tagged and ready to go

So how do you use these? Give them to someone in your newsroom to take a closer look at the issues your listeners care about. It can be as easy as bringing a local university professor into the studio. Or it can be ambitious like what Wisconsin Public Radio did, a 4-parter that reached deep into the community.

Other ways :

• Use them as conversation-starters for local talk/call-in shows.
• Add balance for when only one candidate comes to town.
• Generate more web traffic by posting them online and encouraging listeners to post their responses.

There’s lots of things you can do. If you think of other ways, tell me about it!

Update: Here’s part of Clinton’s housing speech on Monday

Update#2: Here is an excellent commentary on repairing the housing crisis, here’s a long piece about what having a home means, here’s a 30 minute doc on the subprime loans, and here’s an uber-short heart breaker about loosing a home.

Update #3: Here you can find housing statistics for your state/region

Above is a radio piece produced by the Center for Public Integrity about money in politics. They are predicting the 2008 presidential election to cost a billion dollars. The story overviews the progression of money in politics from Nixon all the way to President G. W. Bush.

I recently lent a hand to West Virgina Public Radio searching campaign finance records for the state’s top donors. We saw evidence of wealthy citizens trying to buy their way into Congress, children “writing” checks to their parents favored political candidates, and business owners using their employees to further their personal political prerogatives.

For sure political contributions are a form of free speech. But only a fool would think all donors are merely expressing their right to petition the government. This year newsrooms should spend some days looking at campaign finance in their local areas. PRX is busy coming up with ways to help so stay tuned!

In the meantime: license this piece and air it, find out what kind of campaign disclosure records your state keeps, and get in touch to let us know what you’re working on and how we can help.

Going over the soundbites from the speech you can see a logical progression:

1. Obama condems Wright
2. Obama places Wright in the context of the “black church”
3. Anger in African-American communities creates resentment in white communities
4. and, finally, Obama is the candidate who can heal both black anger and white resentment.

A very nuanced argument to thread with such a blunt instrument as mass media. Hopefully news programmers are up for the challenge. If you are such a producer here is Obama’s speech in the raw along with some choice cuts that I’ve annotated for your ease.

Good luck!

After thought: it’s interesting to listen to Clinton’s (very brief) speech at Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem.

“I remember just laughing and thinking ‘they are going to think I’m a fraud. They’re going to know I’m a local!’”

That night McCord filed a story for WYSO about the event’s turnout and the general mood of the crowd (she also posted sound for the PRX collection). WYSO is one of Ohio’s smallest newsrooms. With only one fulltime reporter and two reporter/hosts much of their news comes from a statewide news service. The primary was everyone’s first foray into covering politics.

“It was trial by fire here, we’re definitely very green,” she says, “but it’s a really small and dedicated staff.”

With 37,000 watts WYSO focuses their in-house news coverage exclusively on a the Miami Valley with a population of 1.7 million. In the weeks leading up to the primary WYSO produced a handful of reporter packages: vox-based stories on voter issues, turnout on election day, and interviews with two political science professors. They also aired essays from youths who gave their issues.

“I really like the local aspect of public radio. I‘m a community oriented person and I like that.”

With such a large national story like the election, McCord found she could keep the local angle by focusing on two organizations that work to get the vote out in Dayton. McCord says one of the organizations has strong religious ties while the other reaches out to young voters. McCord plans to follow each group throughout the year which will help frame the national discussion in a way that local listeners can appreciate.

Here at PRX we have some tools to help. At the top of our main collection page is a del.icio.us tag cloud with a number of links like “AfricanAmericanIssues” or “ClassStruggle.” In McCord’s case we have “YouthIssues” and “Faith.” Each of these links lead to audio in our collection that could easily be worked into a local story. For example, there is a raw lecture posted by Minnesota Public Radio about the history of faith in politics. For African-American issues we have a number of speeches by the candidates where they address concerns in the black community.

McCord says she’s anxious to get started using the PRX collection to help her locally.

“Nationally, that’s what people respond to. It’s really in-depth and where the people are in the local community. It’s something that gets overlooked a lot, but it’s the most important part.”