Takeaway gets play in Seattle

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer interviews John Hockenberry about his new morning drive-time series The Takeaway, now airing on KXOT in Tacoma and KSER in Everett. The live, conversational approach of the PRI-distributed show "allows us to take advantage of the instantaneousness of information sources," Hockenberry says, yet it comes with its own set of challenges. "The work is remaining vigilant to how quickly things are changing in a news environment . . . .There's no such thing as a line-up in our show. We sort of understand what we're doing 20 minutes ahead."

Political message from Lake Wobegon

Prairie Home Companion's Garrison Keillor dissects the righteous reform message of the Republican presidential ticket for Salon. Here's a snippet: "In school, you couldn’t get away with that garbage because the taxpayers know that if we don’t uphold scholastic standards, we will wind up driving on badly designed bridges and go in for a tonsillectomy and come out missing our left lung, so we flunk the losers lest they gain power and hurt us, but in politics we bring forth phonies and love them to death."