The Current

Fans of Minnesota Public Radio’s The Current — including even toddlers at the station’s Rock the Cradle events — helped convince a state appeals court that the deal that created the station in 2004 should stand despite a legal challenge.

The day after the Minnesota Independent contacted Minnesota Court of Appeals Judge David Minge about his assignment to a case involving his alma mater, St. Olaf College, Minge recused himself. He was replaced on the three-judge panel by retired Judge James C. Harten — another Ole (Class of ‘57), who also promptly recused himself. Third [...]

From the outset, the long-running legal dispute over the radio station now known as Minnesota Public Radio’s The Current featured intimacies and conflicts that verged on the familial. Some of the people upset by St. Olaf College’s sale of the former WCAL-FM to MPR are St. Olaf alums (also known as Oles), and some of [...]

Norm Coleman wasn’t the only one whose Minnesota court appeal this week got noticed in the national press. Thursday’s Wall Street Journal highlighted SaveWCAL’s legal effort to up-end the 2004 radio-station sale by St. Olaf College that created Minnesota Public Radio’s The Current. Static between St. Olaf and its alumni provided some crackle to a [...]

CORRECTED AND UPDATED  Advocates for the former WCAL-FM public radio station have filed a petition (pdf) asking the Rice County District Court Sept. 25 to declare the station’s $10.5 million sale to Minnesota Public Radio void.
SaveWCAL wants the court to return the money to WCAL’s charitable trust, along with the fund’s $3 million endowment and the [...]

Two independent radio stations at colleges in two separate states, both sought by one buyer: Minnesota Public Radio.

Advocates for both stations ask their state attorneys general to investigate whether the prospective sales violate laws governing charitable trusts, the structure under which the stations raise funds from donors.

Last month, Florida’s AG agreed to examine whether MPR’s [...]

Overexuberant support for Gov. Tim Pawlenty has come back to bite a major Minnesota company — for a second time. First, an executive with Piper Jaffray, Minnesota’s top municipal bond underwriter, gave too much money to the state’s top elected official. Then the firm did not abide by its penalty — an industry-imposed ban on [...]

A Tale of Two Obits: The Associated Press, announcing the death of Count Gottfried von Bismarck, led its story with news that “the troubled scion of one of Germany’s most famous families has died.” The United Kingdom’s Telegraph got a bit more descriptive. Its lede: “Count Gottfried von Bismarck, who was found dead on Monday [...]

City Pages on WCAL suit: St. Olaf College’s abrupt sale of classical music station WCAL to MPR nearly three years ago ruffled feathers at the time — and, as City Pages’ Jonathan Kaminsky reports, the rufflin’ continues unabated. St. Olaf alums are mounting a lawsuit in an attempt to void the $10.5 million sale to [...]