Tom Banse
Tom Banse covers business, environment, public policy, human interest and national news across the Northwest. He reports from well known and out–of–the–way places in the region where important, amusing, touching, or outrageous events are unfolding. Tom's stories can be heard during "Morning Edition," "Weekday," and "All Things Considered" on NPR stations in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho.
Before taking his current beat, Tom covered state government and the Washington Legislature for 12 years. During the early 1990s, he worked in the Seattle bureau of United Press International. He got his start in radio at WCAL–FM, a public station in southern Minnesota. Reared in Seattle, Tom graduated from Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota with a degree in American Studies. In 1996, he spent two months reporting from Bonn and Berlin, Germany on an Arthur F. Burns Fellowship. In 1999, he traversed the globe to cover the Pacific Rim (Korea, Singapore, Indonesia, Japan) on a Jefferson Fellowship.
When not sifting through press releases, listening to lobbyists, or driving lonely highways, Tom enjoys exploring the Olympic Peninsula backcountry and cooking dinner with his wife and friends. Tom's secret ambition is to take six months off work and travel to a faraway place where there are no radios.
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President Barack Obama named former Washington Gov. Gary Locke as his Commerce secretary. Locke, an Asian-American, is Obama's third pick for the job. Locke served two terms as Washington's governor. He now works at a Seattle-based law firm.
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A rare mushroom that grows in the old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest may offer protection from smallpox -- an infectious disease that security experts feel may be a biological weapon of choice for terrorists who wish to attack America.
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Oregon's Wheeler County, one of the poorest in the American West, hopes to stimulate a struggling rural economy by attracting attention to ancient fossils and the state's prehistoric times. -
That holiday tree in your living room seems fresh, but it was probably plucked from the farm earlier this month. Tom Banse has an insider's look at the industrial operation to bring trees to market.
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In the small town of Seaside, Ore., residents took time out of the weekend to participate in a tsunami evacuation drill. Producer Tom Banse sends this audio postcard of the disaster-preparation training day.
