Saturday, May 14, 2011

Eric Eskola: Former Capitol Reporter at WCCO

Eric Eskola got his first job at KDAL in Duluth as a film librarian.

Drawn to politics, Eskola enjoyed the autonomy of radio and was honored to be hired at WCCO News Radio in 1980.

"Watergate turned reporters into these kind of white knights on horses exposing corruption at the highest levels of government," he said. "Reporting was, I don't know if it was a popular profession, but again, it was a glamorous profession."

Eskola stands out in my own memory because WCCO is such a Minnesota institution—I remember my grandparents' radio tuned to WCCO when I visited in the 1980s. In the 2000s, when I started work as a reporter for a small network of newspapers at the sometimes confusing State Capitol, Eskola was friendly, modest and supportive.

Eskola continues to delve into politics in regular appearances on TPT's Almanac.

This interview was conducted at TPT headquarters in downtown St. Paul at March 25, 2011.


Audio of the interview is available for download here: http://www.archive.org/details/EricEskola2

The full transcript of the interview is available here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/59060041

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