Holidays can be great at a radio station because it takes a certain number of essential personnel to keep the station on the air, but everything is more laid back than on a normal business day, so the atmosphere is relaxed and congenial. Tony Lopez has a holiday today from his day job and he just came by with his family so they could meet everyone (when he's here on Saturday nights the place is pretty empty). Steve Seel is on the air during daylight hours for the first time in a while, and it's great having him around. Our colleagues -- especially the on-air staff -- on the News and Classical Music networks are here, too, of course. And the dress code is definitely casual. To add to the scene, you should know that the construction workers scheduled some special projects for today, since fewer people are in the building. They sealed parts of Steve Nelson's office in plastic, climbed into the sealed-off area from the outside of the building (yes, there's a hole in the wall), and did a lot of drilling. They seem to be finishing up right now. Needless to say Steve is working somewhere else. Meanwhile, Thorn and I have had a series of meetings with folks about a concert we're trying to put together for later in the spring.

Annie Baxter has been here for a few hours working on the afternoon news. She puts together the news from a few different sources, the main one being the Minnesota Public Radio newsroom. She also reads the wire services and checks out web sites of leading news sources across the state and around the globe. From these she pulls the news stories she thinks are most important for 89.3 and attends the daily newsroom meeting with other MPR reporters and editors to talk about what she's going to do. After that, she figures out who will do what. For example, she decides whether she'll write about the material for a newscast she'll read herself, whether she'll get an editor to discuss the story with her, or maybe use a news story that one of our reporters is putting together for 91.1. Right now she is sitting outside my office in the cube where we keep our audio production equipment, editing material she'll use for Mary Lucia's show.

Last week we had the first instance of 89.3 giving a news story to the News station. After DJ Spooky was in the studios with Mary Lucia, the News staff took his interview and edited it down to a four minute piece that ran on All Things Considered on 91.1 the same night. Later in the evening, 89.3 ran the short version. We think there will be a lot of opportunities like this in the future.