Minnesota Public Radio pulls Dara off the air

By Emily Weiss Thu., Jun. 14 2012 at 1:05 PM

Categories: News

No more Dining with Dara

Last week former City Pages food editor and recent transplant to Mpls/St. Paul magazine, Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl, took to Facebook to express her disappointment and announce that Minnesota Public Radio was pulling her from the air. Here's her status update in full:

So, so sad -- MPR just told me we're taking the summer off so they can re-evaluate their food coverage... no Current for the Summer (and I had such a great Rock the Garden post for next week!) no All Things Considered (and such a good harukei turnip story for next week!) I'm so, so sad. I don't even know what to do. If you can this summer, send them a note saying you wish they'd bring me back in the fall. Oh, my heart hurts.

Grumdahl had a popular regular segment called "Dining with Dara" that took an in-depth look at our local food scene. The suspicion was that her switch from Minnesota Monthly (a subsidiary of MPR's parent company, American Public Media Group) to MSP magazine had something to do with it, a suspicion more or less confirmed when the Hot Dish asked MPR to comment and it offered the following statement from general manager Tim Roesler:

MPR News and The Current will be taking time this summer to evaluate how we handle our food coverage. Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl has been a fun addition to our programming and we're looking at several other options, too. We've always taken advantage of the talent within our company, thus we've regularly used The Splendid Table's Lynne Rossetto Kasper and food editors from our sister magazine, Minnesota Monthly (Dara was food editor at Minnesota Monthly when we first asked her to join us regularly on air). Because Minnesota Monthly recently hired a new food editor, Rachel Hutton, we have a great chance to pause, and study the best ways to enhance our food coverage.

Grumdahl declined to comment beyond her Facebook post. With her legions of fans reaching out to The Current to protest the switch, there's a possibility she will return in the fall, but for now their food coverage future remains uncertain.