Morning Edition

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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep.

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

And I'm David Greene.

It's the final week before the debates begin and the presidential candidates are stepping up their campaigning as they try to shake loose what polls are still showing to be a very tight race. We'll hear about one of those polls of rural voters in just a minute. But first, both President Obama and Governor Mitt Romney appeared last night on the CBS program "60 Minutes."

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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

"Homeland" and "Modern Family" were big winners last night at the Emmy Awards. For Showtime, the "Homeland" win was a first-ever Emmy for a drama series.

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

It's a thriller about the CIA fighting terrorism in the U.S. It also won acting awards for Claire Danes and Damian Lewis.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE 2012 EMMY AWARDS")

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(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

NPR's business news begins with a media divorce.

Village Voice Media Holdings, the company that publishes the newspaper of the same name, is breaking up with its controversial advertising service. Backpage.com has been accused of facilitating sex trafficking, and activists have been pressuring the Village Voice to shut down its adult classifieds service - so the company is splitting up its portfolio.

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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

The Dow Jones industrial average may be the most famous barometer of stock market sentiment. It's not a broad measure. Only 30 stocks are in the Dow and this elite group of big blue chip companies supposedly represents the health of the U.S. economy. So, it is noteworthy when a company is kicked off the Dow or allowed in.

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

Grizzly Bear, which has just released its fourth studio album, Shields, spoke to Morning Edition host David Greene about democracy within the band, censorship and candor in interviews, and achieving success as an indie band. Hear the radio version at the audio link and read part of their conversation below.

Interview Highlights

On division of labor in Grizzly Bear

The nation's smallest and most remote places are providing Mitt Romney's biggest margins in battleground states as the 2012 presidential race enters its final weeks.

In fact, rural counties are keeping Romney competitive in the states that are now up for grabs. That's what a new bipartisan survey indicates. The poll also finds that President Obama's rural support has plunged since 2008.

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RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney has been busy after a tape emerged of him telling wealthy donors that nearly half of Americans see themselves as victims dependent on the federal government. Now he's trying to make those remarks part of a broader argument: What is the proper role of government and who should pay for it?

unemployment is still above 8 percent and some companies are warning of lower profits. Yet the stock market keeps climbing. Renee Montagne talks to David Wessel, economics editor of The Wall Street Journal, about why markets are at their highest levels since the financial crisis four years ago.

By the time Glenn Beck left the Fox News Channel in June 2011, both sides seemed ready, even eager, to part ways. Beck announced he would move on to bigger and grander ventures with his own production company, Mercury Radio Arts, but some media critics, such as Variety's Brian Lowry, shrugged then and since.

We were curious how hard it would be to set up an offshore company, so this summer we bought two. We at Planet Money are now the proud owners of "Unbelizable Inc." in Belize and "Delawho? LLC" in Delaware. The whole process was quick and easy.

At least that's how it seemed at first — until we got an email from David Buckley, a tax lawyer at Rogin Nassau, telling us we had just walked into an IRS sinkhole.

Buckley described it as "a minefield of U.S. tax obligations," and he said he was worried about me. (The companies are in my name.)