The Face of Minnesota Public Radio

Minnesota has regularly found itself in the national spotlight in recent years. The murder of George Floyd and assassination of state representative Melissa Hortman. The mass shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church. The fallout from Operation Metro Surge.  

Duchesne Drew ’94 MS says part of his mission as president of Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) is to help stitch together his beleaguered — and resilient — community.  

“Minnesota is really dynamic and so much more diverse than people imagine it to be,” says Drew. “We are, in many ways, a microcosm of the U.S. — and the U.S. is pulling itself apart right now. In Minnesota, we’re blue in Minneapolis-St. Paul, in Rochester and in Duluth, and we’re red most every place else. All that is fine. We can be progressive and we can be conservative without hating each other.  

“At MPR we’re trying to create a connective tissue for people to have a deeper appreciation for different perspectives and, frankly, to create a sense of what we might do and be together if we could stop kneecapping each other.” 

Born in New York City, and raised on Long Island, N.Y., Drew became Minnesota’s adopted son. Drew interned at the Star Tribune in Minneapolis (now the Minnesota Star Tribune) in the summer of 1993 and then returned to the paper as a reporter after earning his master’s degree from the Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications. (He was inducted into the Medill Hall of Achievement in 2021.) 

Drew left Minnesota for two years, serving as an education reporter at The Dallas Morning News before returning to the Star Tribune. He ascended to become managing editor of operations before heading leadership programs at the Bush Foundation. In 2020 he joined MPR and the American Public Media Group, where he is also a senior vice president. Drew oversees MPR News and MPR’s music services, which reach more than 800,000 radio listeners combined each week, and the station’s digital services.  

“The Current is regarded as one of the best, most innovative adult album alternative music stations in the country,” says Drew. “And our classical station is the base for our national classical service, which runs on hundreds of stations across the country, making us the largest distributor of classical music in the nation. 

“I’m responsible for all of our content across all of our channels and our live events — all the ways we serve and engage with our community,” he adds.

MPR News is one of local public radio’s most-visited websites. In late 2025 it earned the No. 1 spot in Nieman Lab’s fourth-quarter web traffic rankings of local public media. 

“People come to us because of the quality of the work,” Drew says. “It is thoughtful, in-depth, balanced, fact-based, grounded reporting and writing.

“Even before things got so hot, we were already one of the more successful public media orgs,” he adds. “We already had the second-largest membership program in the country among radio stations.” By the end of the 2026 fiscal year, MPR had approximately 170,000 contributing members; only beat out by WNYC in New York City, Drew asserts.   

He knows MPR’s work resonates with Minnesotans. After the elimination of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and state funding cuts, “we lost $6 million … within a matter of weeks,” he says.

But MPR saw “a surge in new members as well as existing members deciding to dig a little deeper to make sure we would be here for the long haul.

“Many people read the loss of federal funding with the elimination of CPB as an effort to really reduce news and information. Our members stepped up and said, ‘Oh, that’s not gonna happen on our watch.’ Public media organizations saw growth in membership not just in Minnesota but across the country — both in the total number of members and the revenue tied to it.” 

Drew’s goal is to make even more people aware of MPR. In a state of more than 5 million, “there are plenty of people who don’t consume a thing we do, people who don’t even know we exist,” says Drew, who focuses on strategy, fundraising, partnerships and community engagement at the station. 

“I’m the face of MPR in the community,” adds Drew, who lives in St. Paul with his wife, MPR News morning show host Angela Davis. “If there’s a speech to be given or a chicken dinner to go to or a deal to be brokered, I’m there. And I love it.”