“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!

• 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

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.