Well, I talked to my boss and got the green light to post about work-related things. I doubt I will need to worry about it, but seeing that this is my personal space, I will still disclaim that my comments are entirely personal and do not represent the views of my employer. There.

So, in case you didn’t know already, my job is the web designer for Minnesota Public Radio. (Wikipedia has a pretty nice entry if you’re unfamiliar.) MPR is foremost a network of radio stations based on three services: news, classical music, and alternative/eclectic music… but it’s really much more than that. MPR has quite a robust offering of news and features apart from the radio content — much more so than most radio stations (public or not) — and it is very akin to working at a newspaper company (or so I’m told).

We actually recently did a redesign of the site just a few weeks ago, and are pushing out things in manageable chunks. Today, for example, we pushed out the new design to our weblogs. (My “other job” is as a contributor to one of said weblogs, The Bleacher Bums, which is all about baseball, which is a big deal right now if you live in Minnesota.) Most of what I do has to do with the presentation of the news content, creating interactive elements (sometimes complementary, sometimes entirely web-specific) and crafting the numerous sections, projects, and general interactions of the site.

The news aspect is only one part, which is part of why it’s such an interesting place to work. I also do work with American Public Media, which is the brand under which MPR produces and distributes public radio programming for other stations around the world. I’ve designed a handful of sites such as Saint Paul Sunday, Pipedreams, and American Mavericks (which won a Peabody, by the way) and been a part of a lot of interesting projects.

So there’s news, there’s music, and there’s ideas, design and presentation. I’m a huge fan of all of those things. If you are too, check out my bookmarks and future posts on this weblog.

Anything in specific you’d like me to talk about?