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GRETA CUNNINGHAM: With news for Minnesota Public Radio, I'm Greta Cunningham. Democrat Mary Reeder hopes to take on first district Republican Congressman Gil Gutknecht again. Reeder lost a close race to the three-term Southeastern Minnesota Congressman in 1996. The two campaigns spent a combined $1.5 million that year, and Reeder expects another costly race if she wins the DFL nomination.

MARY REEDER: We have received almost no money of the money that we have right now from outside the district. But it's clear that a lot of the money is going to come from outside of the district. It has to. There's just no way we're going to raise $1 million here in the district. But Mr Gutknecht's money comes from all over to.

GRETA CUNNINGHAM: Reeder says she has $40,000 in the bank and will raise $100,000 in the next six weeks. Gutknecht's campaign manager says he has $240,000 on hand and will also raise $1 million for the campaign. Saint Olaf College has kicked off its most ambitious fundraising drive ever. The goal is to raise $125 million in five years. The campaign's lead gift of $26 million was given in February 1997. That money was used to build a Student Union that opens tomorrow. Money raised in the campaign will go toward the College's endowment for professorships, building improvements scholarships, and faculty salaries.

The forecast for the state of Minnesota today calls for partly cloudy skies statewide. It'll be windy in the North with high temperatures from 40 in the Northwest to 60 in the Southeast. Tonight, clear skies statewide with lows from 15 in the East to 25 in the West. Checking current conditions around the region, no clouds reported in. Saint Cloud reports sunshine and 46, Duluth reports sunny skies and 43, it's fair in Fargo and 43, and in the Twin Cities, mostly sunny skies, a temperature of 47. That's a news update. I'm Greta Cunningham. Programming on MPR is supported by financial contributions from Minnesota Public Radio listeners.

GARY EICHTEN: Six minutes now past 12.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Good afternoon. Welcome back to midday on Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Gary Eichten. Glad you could join us. Well, today on midday, we have two interviews from our Voices of Minnesota series. Today, we're going to hear from a couple of journalism's most thoughtful people. First of all, retired University of Minnesota journalism Professor Don Gilmore. Later this hour, we'll be hearing from retired political reporter, Betty Wilson.

Don Gilmore, internationally known, respected media scholar. You might recall, he's the former director of the Center for the Study of Media Ethics and Law at the U of M. Well, he is a native of Fort Frances, Ontario. Before becoming a University professor, he was a reporter at the Winnipeg Free Press. Minnesota Public Radio's Mary Stucky talked with Don Gilmore.

MARY STUCKY: What's the most dramatic change you've seen in this field of journalism since you've started?

DON GILMORE: It's not such a dramatic change, Mary. It's a slow, gradual and somewhat insidious change, and that is that it becomes more and more difficult to distinguish between news and entertainment. That worries me. Television news, for example-- and I'm talking about local as well as network news, tends to avoid the really big, significant questions.

Programs like 48 Hours and Dateline, for example, seem to me to be more entertainment than news. They often deal with the sad lives of individual people. I do think that Public Broadcasting does deal with the big issues. But unfortunately, it has minuscule audiences. The typical American is not tuned in to a channel 2 on NPR, and I think that's unfortunate.

Now, it's easy, though, to make statements that sound very elitist as if I something that nobody else knows. I have a lot of faith in ordinary people. I think that ultimately, they seem to make the right decisions about things. So I'm not sure about-- the older I get, the less certain I am about my opinions and my conclusions about people in society.

MARY STUCKY: You were the head of the Silha Center for the Study of Media, Ethics, and Law at the University of Minnesota for many, many years. I think a lot of listeners will hear that study of Media Ethics and say, oh, now more than ever, we need to do that. Do you agree?

DON GILMORE: Media ethics is sometimes referred to as an oxymoron. It seems to be two concepts sleeping in the same bed that don't belong together. But I think the media are probably more sensitive than they've ever been to ethical issues. This is not to say that they're more ethical than they used to be, but they seem to respond more acutely to criticisms of their behavior, ethical miscues of one kind or another.

There seems to be a certain guilt feeling that didn't used to be there in the days of jazz journalism when anything went. There seems also to be higher educational requirements now for journalists, and I think that does elevate the field to some extent. But there are still those who, it seems to me, in commercial broadcasting particularly, and to some extent in the print media, who will do anything to get a story.

We have the capabilities now in our society of at least challenging those people. I think of-- when I think of Minnesota, I think of the Minnesota News Council right away. Anyone can make a complaint to that council. Now, sadly, we're the only council of its kind in the whole United States. Although, I might note that eight of the 10 Canadian provinces have news councils.

MARY STUCKY: I'm curious as to how you've seen students change, journalism students change over the years. You say that journalists are better educated. There are those who argue that affluence and higher education make journalists more allied with the establishment, with the powers that be. And in another generation, there was more of a kind of working class orientation among working journalists.

DON GILMORE: Yes, that's true. One could argue that the greatest threat to American journalism ultimately will be its patterns of ownership. And if that's what we mean by the establishment, then we have cause to be very much concerned.

MARY STUCKY: You're talking about the consolidation of newspaper, television, and radio ownership--

DON GILMORE: Yes.

MARY STUCKY: --in ever larger corporate hands.

DON GILMORE: I'm talking about Westinghouse. I'm talking about Disney. I'm talking about these huge conglomerates that have tentacles all over the world--

MARY STUCKY: What's the problem.

DON GILMORE: --our system. The problem? I think in a market economy, in a capitalist society, there is an inevitability about the big getting bigger and richer and the poor just falling by the wayside. Now, there is something, of course, that is interfering with this growth, and that's the internet.

In terms of ethics and law, particularly the law, it's a new ball game. At this very moment, I'm reading a dissertation which has everything to do about the law of the internet and the media law of the internet. How will privacy be dealt with in the internet? How will libel be dealt with in the internet?

The internet makes every person a publisher, which must be a rather ominous development from the point of view of the establishment, which will be unable, it seems to me, to control that technology the way it's able to control newspapers. The Murdaughs and the Blacks, these people who originate as foreigners own more newspapers.

I've heard of Conrad Black, owns more newspapers in the United States than anybody else, and most Americans have never heard of him. His company is called Holsinger, I think-- H-O-L-S-I-N-G-E-R. Nobody's ever heard of Conrad Black and yet he's going to match Rupert Murdoch, the Australian, soon in the number of newspapers he owns worldwide.

MARY STUCKY: Mr. Gilmore, what's wrong with that.

DON GILMORE: Ultimately, you have a very, very few editorial voices. This is not to say that a Conrad Black or a Rupert Murdaugh, that any single person has anything at all to say about day to day editorial decisions. But in the final analysis, it seems to me that the perspective of ownership is going to be reflected on the editorial pages of those newspapers. Not only the opinion pages, but the way news is covered.

What stories are to be told? What issues are to be considered important. It's always been the fact that, it seems to me, that he who pays the piper calls the tune. And sooner or later, that's going to happen. The Wall Street Journal is a good example of a newspaper, however, that has an extremely conservative, one could almost say, reactionary editorial page and yet one of the best newsrooms in the country.

The reporters and the editorial is obviously are on different wavelengths. And that kind of professionalism may somehow serve as a counter force to what you call the establishment, those patterns of ownership that we've talked about.

MARY STUCKY: When a news operation is just a tiny part of a larger corporate empire, is there any incentive to run it as anything other than a business, a bottom line business?

DON GILMORE: I don't think so. I think the Gannett newspapers are a good example of that. They now own an excess of 100 newspapers. And when you think of the few big chains, Knight Ridder number one, Gannett number two, if you own, let's say, 300 of 1,700 newspapers, you own a very substantial percentage of the entire field.

And I think Gannett newspapers are an example of how newspapers can reflect the value system of whoever is in control. Those papers are generally considered to be undistinguished. They don't stand out. These properties are incredibly profitable. I mean, we're talking about returns on the order of 20% is unheard of in most industries. Of course, they are now being challenged by a new era of technology and the internet.

GARY EICHTEN: You're listening to a Voices of Minnesota interview with retired University of Minnesota journalism Professor Don Gilmore. Gilmore, a native of Canada, says Americans are woefully uninformed about Canada and the rest of the world, for that matter. And he says press coverage does little to help. Let's return to Mary Stucky's conversation with Don Gilmore.

MARY STUCKY: As a reporter, I know that the really important stories require a lot of time and digging and effort and money. Where's the incentive to pay for that these days? Is there still an incentive to do those stories?

DON GILMORE: There is less incentive, perhaps, than there was in the past. But it's almost dangerous to glorify the past because the past was never as bright and impressive as we think it was. But I think you're right. It takes time and it takes sensitivity. It takes research skills to really deal with the big and important stories. And we don't seem to be doing that much anymore.

MARY STUCKY: How well informed are Americans? That's really the goal, isn't it?

DON GILMORE: I don't know how well informed Americans are. There are so many different kinds of Americans. There are so many different classifications. In some respects, we may be the best informed people in the world. And in other respects, we are not. We get more information and independent information, information that is free of political constraints, than people anywhere else.

We are bombarded with information, so much information that perhaps we can't digest it. We can't make anything out of it. We seem to be chasing entertainment. We want to be entertained. We do everything possible to be entertained. We don't have time for putting together our thoughts for using this information in the best possible way.

MARY STUCKY: What you're saying is that we're-- that news is reported in bits and pieces and that we aren't doing very well with the big picture stories, with synthesizing this information to produce the bigger truths about our country and world. Is this what you're saying?

DON GILMORE: That's what I'm saying. Now, people do that for us after the fact in books. Maybe that's good enough. It means that we're getting the synthesis that we need so we can understand our environment, but we're getting it after the fact.

MARY STUCKY: Do you think the American people want complexity, subtlety, bigger truths, or do they just want to be entertained?

DON GILMORE: Well, again, it depends on how you define the American people. But I do think that bottom line financial demands made by ownership will guarantee that entertainment will come first.

MARY STUCKY: Because?

DON GILMORE: Because that's easier. It's much easier, it seems to me, for a mass audience to find entertainment, to sit back and just let it flow over you than to be challenged by tough ideas that lead to tough decisions that we get to make periodically, perhaps with the ballot.

MARY STUCKY: Is that what the Monica, Lewinsky, Bill Clinton story was about, titillation, entertainment?

DON GILMORE: Absolutely, that's what it was all about. It was a soap opera come to life, really. It was self sustaining for months, for years, actually.

MARY STUCKY: Are we going to continue, do you think we, the media, we the journalists of this country, to go down this road we've gone down with Monica and Bill.

DON GILMORE: I think we are. And again, I think there is a direct connection between those kinds of stories, the way we handle them, and the way-- by handling them, the way we do-- we attract audiences, large audiences, and we keep them with us for weeks and months and even years.

MARY STUCKY: What's wrong with it?

DON GILMORE: We become onlookers. We are discouraged from being activists, being engaged, being involved. We simply stand there and watch. Now, again, these are gross generalizations. Anyone listening to what I'm saying could find so many exceptions. The generalization is probably as dangerous as anything else. It presents as true complex questions and situations that are really not that way.

MARY STUCKY: By all accounts, there is less ongoing foreign news reporting than there used to be. The world is shrinking. Americans are being asked to go to war in countries they can't even locate on the map. Any hope that we will see more and better foreign news reporting in the future?

DON GILMORE: Again, I'm not hopeful. I think that I can safely say that every foreign graduate student that I've ever met makes the very same complaint about the lack of coverage of his or her homeland. I think it is true that Americans are close to being illiterate when it comes to the foreign countries.

And this is partly the fault of our news and information systems. They don't tell us very much, and they certainly don't tell it in a meaningful way. I could use Canada as an example. There is practically no coverage in newspapers that are not that far away from the border. Very little coverage and no sustained coverage, no meaningful coverage of our closest neighbor.

MARY STUCKY: Why? Are American newspaper readers disinterested in Canada, disinterested in the world?

DON GILMORE: I'm not sure that that's the word to use. It may be there is a lack of interest to be sure, and that is partly due to the fact that our own society is so doggone complex. I mean, how many of us understand the United states, let alone foreign countries? We're still working on that. Maybe when we have that figured out, then we'll take the next step and try to figure out what's going on in Mexico and Canada and countries around the world.

But Canadians find it rather sad and regretful that Americans can't make more sense of who their neighbors are. They take it as a personal affront, really. It's an unintended insult when Americans will ask Canadians questions that are off the wall. We used to have tourists-- as an undergraduate, I worked as a customs officer on the border in International Falls, Fort Frances, which was a huge port of entry.

By July the 1st or July the 4th, we would have had license plates from all 48 states, mainly Fisher people. But Americans would ask us if they could get to Toronto for lunch, and we'd-- we had a stock answer. We'd say, if you hurry, you can. And then they'd say, how far is it? And we'd say, 1,200 miles.

Or the Sheriff of Cook county, Chicago, would threaten us with his Senator because we were taking his pistols and revolvers away from him. You could not cross the Canadian border with any kind of a concealed weapon. And he was going to get his Senator after us. He had no notion that Canada was a sovereign state.

MARY STUCKY: We tend to believe, I think, that we have the most press freedom in the world here in this country. Is it true? Is there anything we can learn from the press and what it does in other countries?

DON GILMORE: No, that's where I draw the line. We can't learn anything about press freedom from other countries. We do have the freest press in the world. We have the First Amendment, and we have the United States Supreme Court. And now it's taken the United States Supreme Court more than 200 years to define this right as it has taken it that long to define other rights. But it has managed to do so. And no other country has as free of press as we have. And no other country has as free a judicial branch of government as we have.

Mary, six of us went to Moscow not too many years ago to discuss with the brilliant young lawyers who had just written the new Russian press law. We went there to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the new Russian press law. These were very impressive young people.

And it became clear to us after the first hour or so of our discussion that this press law wasn't going to work, and it wasn't going to work because there was nobody who you could be sure of as a referee in the system. Who was going to have the last word about this? Was it going to be the party? Was it going to be the legislature? Was it going to be the president?

I remember two of us went to see the-- I wasn't one of them, but two of our party went to meet the Chief Justice of Russia, and they came back singularly impressed with him. About two months later, he was fired. Now, imagine if our Chief Justice Rehnquist took a turn that philosophically the party in power disagreed with and he could be fired.

Now, what kind of protection would the First Amendment would any right-- freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of press, freedom of association, or any other right, have in a structure of that kind where the referee, if he made a call you didn't like, could be thrown off the field? So we have the best-- I'm convinced that we have the best system. I have spent my life as a Canadian marveling at the reasonableness and the genius even of the US Constitution.

MARY STUCKY: What is the most encouraging sign you see in journalism today?

DON GILMORE: The most encouraging sign I see is those reporters and editors-- and there are lots of them, who will not take that deadly step over the line. They will not-- there are some things they will not do. They have ethical boundaries that they will not cross. More and more, I think that is happening.

And that is going to be, I think, in the future, the greatest challenge that professionalization of reporters and editors. That will be the greatest challenge to this insidious concentration of ownership that we were talking about earlier that seems to be an inevitable consequences of a capitalist system. I'm not saying it's bad, but it's troublesome. It's dangerous, I think, to some of our Democratic precepts.

My hope has to be with the future generations of editors and reporters-- because after all, all information ultimately is a one on one. I'm talking to you. You're talking to me. And then we go to the library to get documentary support for some of the things that we're going to say. But it's people talking to people. It's the interview ultimately. And I think as reporters and editors become better educated and more ethically sensitive, I think our business, our trade, our craft will improve.

MARY STUCKY: Don Gilmore, it was a pleasure talking to you. Thank you very much.

DON GILMORE: You're welcome.

GARY EICHTEN: Retired University of Minnesota journalism Professor Don Gilmore talking with Mary Stucky part of our Voices of Minnesota series. Two-parter today here on our mid-day broadcast. Betty Wilson is one of Minnesota's longest serving and best known political reporters. She's covered the administrations of four Minnesota governors-- Wendell Anderson, Al Quie, Rudy Perpich, Arne Carlson, and is now working on the Ventura administration.

Betty Wilson first worked for the Minneapolis Star, then the Star Tribune newspaper. She's a native of Oklahoma, where she grew up on a ranch. She talked with Minnesota Public Radio's Bob Potter, who, by the way, was a legislative reporter while Wilson was also working at the Capitol in Saint Paul.

BOB POTTER: Were you the first woman reporter there?

BETTY WILSON: There were two of us, Bob. And there's an interesting story too. The other one was Dulcie Lawrence, who was with NPR then.

BOB POTTER: And I remember Dulcie very well.

BETTY WILSON: Yes.

BOB POTTER: Wonderful lady.

BETTY WILSON: Yes. We stuck together and became very good friends. And one year-- every year, the governor has fishing opener. Well, all the men reporters down in the Capitol basement press room got invitations to the governor's fishing opener. Dulcie and I did not get an invitation. So we went to the governor's press secretary and said, hey, you left us out. He says, oh, you're women, you don't want to go to that. Well, of course, what the press did, most of them when they went to this fishing opener, they played poker, they drank. It was just a party.

BOB POTTER: Told body stories no doubt.

BETTY WILSON: No doubt.

BOB POTTER: Yeah.

BETTY WILSON: Well, Dulcie and I put up a big fuss, and we kept harassing this poor press Secretary. Finally, on Friday, the day of the fishing opener, he came downstairs and brought us invitations. Well, we didn't really want to go. We had no idea of going. But anyway, we broke the glass ceiling or the barrier or something there. And from then on, it was just routine that-- I never did go to a fishing opener. I never wanted to go to a fishing opener.

BOB POTTER: Who was the governor at that time?

BETTY WILSON: That was Governor Wendell Anderson.

BOB POTTER: How did the male politicians treat you?

BETTY WILSON: It wasn't so much a male female thing, I guess. As I wrote for weekly newspapers, and, of course, I was the lowest on the totem pole then in the pecking order because you had the Minneapolis Star, the Minneapolis tribune, the Pioneer Press, the Pioneer Dispatch, and there were television stations and just starting to come over there and cover. It was mainly that I was a very humble weekly newspaper reporter, and I was very timid, and-- [LAUGHS] believe it or not.

BOB POTTER: If this were television, people would be shocked at my expression at when you describe yourself as timid. But anyway--

[LAUGHTER]

--back then you probably were.

BETTY WILSON: So writing for weekly newspapers in the suburbs, I mostly covered what our local legislators were doing. And they were very good to me. Of course, they were very glad that I was there writing about them, and they would give me-- once in a while, I would get a good scoop. When Alf Bergerud-- Senator Alf Bergerud was the one Senator there covering all of suburban Hennepin. This was before redistricting, legislative redistricting.

He sponsored a bill, the first redistricting bill, and like that passed eventually in 50 years. Peter Popovich was a house sponsor of Saint Paul. They gave me the scoop on that legislation for-- so it was time for our weekly newspapers, which generally came out on Wednesday or Thursday. So the dailies didn't get the story until after we had it, which was pretty nice.

And once in a while, they did that. But the suburban legislators, they were a bright, young bunch. Bill Frenzel was one of them. Lyall Schwarzkopf, John Yngve. They were really fired up about doing good things for the suburbs and for their constituency. So I got good stories that way.

BOB POTTER: Back in those days, most of the lawmaking process was not done in public, was it?

BETTY WILSON: No. When I first went over there, the Senate especially-- there was a senator, Senator Donald Wright, who was Tax Committee Chairman. And of course, they told stories about he would carry the tax bill around in his pocket, and nobody ever saw really until it was passed almost. And that was the days before we had copy machines, which was really a revolutionary invention.

It was very hard, if not impossible, to get copies of bills. You were lucky if you got a carbon copy of something. And when they got copy machines, that was just a whole new era. And even now, I think if the-- well, maybe not now since you have email and all of that, the net. But in my time, in recent years even, if the Xerox machine breaks down at the Capitol in the final days, it's just a major crisis.

BOB POTTER: Well, not only do they not have copies of bills, but most of the meetings were not open, the critical ones at least were.

BETTY WILSON: That's true. I'm not sure that that's entirely changed now. Well, a lot of business used to be carried on downtown Galvin's bar or somewhere like that. The Blue Horse was a good meeting place, even in fairly recent years before it closed down. The power people still get together maybe in Roger Moe's office or somebody's office, [? Wiggum's ?] office, and make decisions.

BOB POTTER: Well, I suppose that there's something that you'd expect that after a fashion, but it is a lot better now than when they didn't have any open meetings at all.

BETTY WILSON: Oh, certainly. Certainly. And I think the legislators themselves are more conscientious about that, more considerate about that, having meetings open. I remember once Nick Coleman was Senate Majority leader. And I was just wondering around one day in the state office building and saw a meeting room with the door closed.

And I walked past-- I thought, well, it must be something going on. I walked past the secretary who was trying to stop me, and I opened the door, and there was Coleman and legislative leaders. They were sitting in there talking about a pay increase bill.

[LAUGHTER]

Well, once I got in there, they let me stay. They were shocked and dismayed.

[LAUGHTER]

But they let me stay.

BOB POTTER: How did you get stories in the paper then? If you didn't have copies of the bills, you couldn't sit through the meetings, how did you find out what happened?

BETTY WILSON: Talking with people.

BOB POTTER: There were some extraordinary personalities at the State Capitol throughout your years, and I'd like to get your thumbnail reaction--

BETTY WILSON: Oh, there were just some giants in those days too.

BOB POTTER: Well--

BETTY WILSON: As well as, quote, "characters". [LAUGHS]

BOB POTTER: Yeah, well, all right, who is a giant in your view?

BETTY WILSON: I think Nick Coleman was. He would have made a very good governor, a very good senator, and there were a number of people like that. They had a passion for public service. They had a passion for people, for doing good things. They were ambitious, sure, politically ambitious, but they saw a feeling-- they had a regard for doing things, for helping people, the poor, the needy, the disadvantaged.

BOB POTTER: Who else falls into that category of giant, would you say?

BETTY WILSON: Well, looking at the present day, one I think of is Roger Moe, because he took over-- he was Nick Coleman's successor as Senate Majority Leader. But going back to those days, there was Jack Davis, who later went to the courts. Senator Edward Gearty, North Minneapolis Irishman. He was president of the Senate. Very witty. There were some good women in those days.

I think of Alpha Smaby, North East Minneapolis state legislator. Very liberal for those days. She was a leader in the anti-Vietnam War Movement. There were Nancy Brataas and Emily Anne Staples when they first got elected to the Senate. That was quite a shock for those conservative men in what they'd thought of as their-- some of them thought of as their private gentlemen's club there.

BOB POTTER: Now, were they the first women elected?

BETTY WILSON: Not the first women elected. But because there were-- there was another one or two right after women's suffrage in the early 20s, back in those days. But then there was a hiatus, and Sally Luther was in the legislature when I first went there. And she got to be the chairman of an important committee there, civil administration. So she was a mover and shaker too in early days.

BOB POTTER: I want to ask you about some of the characters, too. And certainly, Clarence Purfeerst has to come close to the top of the list on that. Purfeerstisms.

BETTY WILSON: That's what they called them, wasn't it?

BOB POTTER: Yes.

BETTY WILSON: I can't think of any off the top of my head, but he was delightful.

BOB POTTER: Yeah. I think he said one time, we'll get right to the crotch of the matter.

BETTY WILSON: That sounds like him.

[LAUGHTER]

BOB POTTER: There are others. How about John Spanish over in the House?

BETTY WILSON: Well, he was famous for his bill to give free hunting license to the blind.

[LAUGHTER]

BOB POTTER: And he was serious about it, wasn't he?

BETTY WILSON: Yes, absolutely.

[LAUGHTER]

BOB POTTER: Oh, dear.

GARY EICHTEN: You're listening to a Voices of Minnesota interview with reporter Betty Wilson. Retirement hasn't resulted in a lot of free time for Betty. She's writing a biography of Rudy Perpich and is teaching a media analysis class at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Let's return to Bob Potter's conversation with Betty Wilson.

BOB POTTER: We ought to talk about some of the governors that you've covered over the years. Al Quie came along.

BETTY WILSON: Al Quie was-- he was a very decent person. He just came along at the bad times. The economy was depressed then. Originally, when he started out, I think the DFL majorities in the legislature set him up. That first year in 1979, they spent money like there was no tomorrow. And I think at least some of the leaders knew what was coming, that they were going to be-- the state was going to be in financial trouble.

Al Quie wanted something called indexing, you remember, which was to keep income tax rates-- adjust them for the rate of inflation so you wouldn't get bumped up into a higher bracket if you got a pay raised to keep up with inflation. So as a trade off for that, the DFLers demanded more money for some of their favorite spending programs.

Well, then the next year, the recession set in. The state was in deep, deep trouble. And as you remember, it was one series of special sessions after another. Along about the second or third special session, governor Quie said, you couldn't cut anymore, couldn't cut programs anymore. He said, we have cut to the bone. And he confronted his conservative Republican allies with that, and they were adamant that had to cut, not raise taxes.

And Quie dug in and said, no. And he got to be very good friends with Roger Moe during those days. Those two people, almost more than anybody, I think, helped keep the state on an even keel at great sacrifices. Governor Quie did not run again. He had become unpopular, and his own party was rejecting him because they thought that he had gone along and raised taxes in cahoots with the DFLers. And Roger Moe toiled day and night, and I think that's one of the reasons Roger Moore never got to be a governor, because he had too many battle scars from those days.

BOB POTTER: On to the current occupant of the governor's office, Jesse Ventura, what do you make of Jesse?

BETTY WILSON: Who knows. He's a Marvel.

[LAUGHTER]

BOB POTTER: Have you met him.

BETTY WILSON: Oh, yes. I recently did a magazine article on him for Twin Cities Business Monthly on his Jesse good for business. The one thing I don't see yet is Governor Ventura, if he's focused, his focus. You go back to Arnie Carlson, well, he was focused on controlling spending, as he put it. I don't see that Governor Ventura has laid out his vision, a vision. They're talking about the big plane-- a big plan, excuse me, but I don't see that he's focused on anything. And that is all important.

BOB POTTER: How about all this personal stuff with him? Is that just noise, background noise, or is that something we should pay attention to?

BETTY WILSON: I think, rightly or wrongly, that character and personal views-- a politician's personal life, it's in the forefront now of campaigns. You look at Bush, the presidential candidate, George Bush, how the press has been hassling him about his cocaine use 10 years ago, remember the gubernatorial campaign? How could you forget it, of course. Jon Grunseth, the Star Tribune, did some articles about his personal life, and it turned the governor's race around. And that's how Arnie Carlson got elected. So, rightly or wrongly, whatever Governor Jesse Ventura does in his off hours as governor is going to be news.

BOB POTTER: Why is that? Why has that changed? I mean, you know, 30, 40, 50 years ago certainly, those sorts of things never got mentioned. And what difference does it make if John Grunseth is in the buff with some kids in a swimming pool 1,000 years ago?

BETTY WILSON: Well, for one thing, you could argue that candidates now more than ever are running on, quote, "family values." They made they make that an issue, and so they raised that point. Then the other argument is, should our political leaders be role models. And more of the-- maybe the older generation people think, yes, that you should look up-- be able to look up to them.

BOB POTTER: What role do you think and what responsibility do you think the press has in this whole area?

BETTY WILSON: The press does more self-examination and bashing of its own self than any other comparable profession or industry. I don't see business going out and saying, well, we ought to do this or we shouldn't do this. I think the press is doing a lot of that on its own and working it out. And Bob, I think you have to make a distinction too between the national press and the local press.

It's been the national press that's going after George Bush. They went after Gary Hart when he was running for president and had this-- was having this affair. I think the local press is moving that way, Twin Cities press, the Jon Grunseth campaign, of course, and I guess-- I think that rightly or wrongly, were there.

BOB POTTER: Do you regret that trend at all?

BETTY WILSON: In some ways, I do, yes. I'm not sure about when we involve someone's family with it. Obviously, Governor Ventura's wife does not want publicity. She wants to be in the background, and she should be able to be. Susan Carlson, of course, stayed in the background. Gretchen Quie, Al Quie's wife, was very uncomfortable being in the spotlight. Lola Perpich was too, until toward the end, and then she took more of a public role. And it's tough for a politician's family. There's just no way around it.

BOB POTTER: It seems that virtually all recent Minnesota governors have had testy relations at times with the press. I recall Perpich once said that Minnesota had the worst Capitol press corps in the nation, whereupon you and a bunch of other Capitol reporters immediately had t-shirts made up, which proudly boasted worst Capitol press corps. Do you remember that?

BETTY WILSON: Of course I do. I still got the t-shirt in my drawer.

[LAUGHTER]

Didn't you get one of those?

BOB POTTER: Oh, yeah, sure. Why is that? Why is it that relations between the press and the governors seem to deteriorate so much?

BETTY WILSON: Well, I think it was Jim Oberstar that once told me that here-- congressmen from the eighth district said, here, we work our heads off, we go night and day doing what we think are good things for the people, and then we get up and read in the paper or see on TV how somebody is bashing us. And we think, what's going on here? Don't they appreciate me? Don't they know what a good guy I am?

But on the other hand, I think the feeling of the press is-- And I felt this way, I think as a reporter at the State Capitol, looking at the governor, for instance, the governors got all these people in the administration who are doing nothing. Well, they're doing a lot trying to make their boss, the governor, look good. And they're very powerful, and they have many ways of making him look good.

And it was our job to maybe look at the other side and maybe look at the flaws and the warts. And I think that's maybe how we see our role much, that we're-- a lot of the time, we're playing devil's advocate.

BOB POTTER: Who do you think are the bright and rising young stars on the Minnesota political scene now?

BETTY WILSON: Tim Pawlenty, I think is one. I think he's one to watch. I think Jim Seifert, a new legislator, is one to watch. Some of the others I'm tal-- those are conservatives, of course. I wouldn't count Norm Coleman out. He doesn't look very good this morning, of course, after the new pole, but he's bright. He's got a way to go. My catch, of course. Where is he going? What's he going to do? Amy Klobuchar is one to watch--

BOB POTTER: Is she?

BETTY WILSON: --in the women, yes.

BOB POTTER: Do you think there's been a change in the caliber of person who gets into public service, who goes for public office these days?

BETTY WILSON: I think there's still a very high caliber of people who are going into public office, but I think it's getting tougher to get them to run because of all this media frenzy, about this personal character stuff.

BOB POTTER: So isn't it to some extent the media's responsibility to back off on that a little bit?

BETTY WILSON: No, I don't think so. Political leaders should be role models. And also that if your personal life, the way you are behaving in your personal life is affecting your public office, then it gets to be a legitimate issue for the media.

BOB POTTER: But if it's just something a person did 30 years ago, does it matter? I mean--

BETTY WILSON: Probably not.

BOB POTTER: Probably not. Yeah. OK. Do you think the business of newspapering has changed a lot since you got started in it?

BETTY WILSON: Oh, certainly. You know the technology has changed it. I think there's better writing nowadays because the computer. You can edit your own copy, as I say, which you couldn't do. When I first started with the Minneapolis Star, we wrote on typewriters, of course. And we would cut and paste, would take our stories when they were typed out on paper. If we want to move a paragraph, you'd cut it out of that piece of paper and paste it up in the place where you wanted.

BOB POTTER: And we're talking literally doing this now, right?

BETTY WILSON: Literally.

BOB POTTER: Yeah.

BETTY WILSON: Every reporter had a paste pot on your desk. That is, you were supposed to have. Somebody would swipe it sometimes.

[LAUGHTER]

And we had copy boys. And I do mean boys who were supposed to keep your paste pot filled for you and change your typewriter ribbons for you. Well, now, on your computer, of course, we can push a key, that button that says, Paste or Cut and move things around.

BOB POTTER: Yeah. How about the industry, the newspaper industry? There seems to have been a lot of consolidation. Good, bad, indifferent, what do you think?

BETTY WILSON: I think it's mixed. When I started out covering politics, I wrote for about 30 to 40 weekly newspapers. That was before all the consolidations and mergers. Each editor I thought-- I had editors and I did freelance and a syndicate. I had editors who were very liberal. I had one editor, out Lake Minnetonka way who was, I think, a little to the right of Genghis Khan or something, but they were all committed to their community.

They covered the school board meeting. They covered the city council or town board meeting. They covered their community, and they cared about their community. And that's gone now. And they were very strong force in the community. They wrote editorials about their-- strong editorials. They had strong editorial stance.

BOB POTTER: Betty Wilson, thank you so much for coming and sharing your thoughts with us today.

GARY EICHTEN: Minnesota Public Radio's Bob Potter talking with reporter Betty Wilson, part of our Voices of Minnesota series, which is produced by Dan Olson. If you missed part of today's broadcast, we'll rebroadcast this program at 9:00 tonight here on Minnesota Public Radio. Well, that does it for our mid-day program today. Our producer is Sarah Meyer. Assistant producer Kara Fiegenschuh We had engineering help this week from Clifford Bentley and Genaro Vazquez. I'm Gary Eichten. Like to thank you for joining us. Hope you can tune in Monday, main street radio broadcast on Veterans Affairs on Monday.

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SPEAKER: Don't miss a special 25th anniversary broadcast of a Prairie Home companion this Saturday from 5:00 to 9:00 with the Del McCoury band, Kelly Joe Phelps, and all the regular cast. Tune in Saturday from 5:00 to 9:00 on Minnesota Public Radio.

GARY EICHTEN: You're listening to Minnesota Public Radio. We have a sunny sky, 49 degrees at KNOW FM, 91.1, Minneapolis and Saint Paul. Sunny and breezy through the afternoon with a high reaching the mid 50s. Clear tonight with a low of 25 to 30. Partly cloudy skies tomorrow with a high in the mid 50s. Dry and mild on Sunday in the cities as well.