Twin Cities Radio: The Current Fires DJ Eric Malmberg

Tuesday evening, Minnesota Public Radio announced it had fired Eric Malmberg, a DJ at MPR’s music station The Current, after public backlash from Current staffers and listeners, reports The Pioneer-Press.

Eric Malmberg

A news alert on MPR’s home page opened with “Listeners and members have reached out to us, and we want to share the following,” a statement from MPR president Duchesne Drew that read: “MPR has made the decision that the audience of The Current is best served by a programmatic change. As a result, Eric Malmberg will no longer be a DJ on The Current. Our hosts have to be able to attract an audience that wants to listen to them and trusts them and over the last 36 hours those conditions have changed for Malmberg.”

Pioneer-Press writer Ross Raihala reports longtime MPR News arts reporter Marianne Combs resigned from the station Monday morning. In her resignation letter, which Combs shared on social media, she said she had spent the past two and half months gathering “testimony from eight women who say that (a DJ for MPR’s The Current) sexually manipulated and psychologically abused them” but that “my editors have failed to move forward on the story.” Combs wrote that the women’s experiences span 15 years and describe a man who “preyed on younger, sexually inexperienced women.”

Marianne Coombs

Combs did not reveal the DJ’s name, which had been widely shared on social media but not publicly reported, according to Raihala.

Tuesday afternoon, more than half of the Current’s staff tweeted their support for Combs.

Meanwhile, Chris Riemenschneider at the Star Tribune reports Malmberg was a relatively new addition to the Current airwaves, joining in June 2018. Before that, he was a DJ at local rock stations 93X and KQRS-92 FM. He was also a musician and program staffer at Minneapolis-based Youth Frontiers, which hosts motivational rallies at schools and youth retreats.