When a newspaper in a small Iowa community won a Pulitzer Prize a few weeks ago, it earned justifiable attention and some that, frankly, bordered on the condescending from the big city media. Of course, great journalism can be done more than a day’s drive from the nearest ocean. And lots of other smart things can happen away from the coasts too.
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MPR News Reflections and observations on the news
Archives for April 2017
Netflix’s “13 Reasons Why” is a popular series that is getting some credit for at least bringing up the issue of teen suicide, which is a sad testament to how unable or how unwilling parents are to talk about the second-leading killer of young adults.
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There is joy, and then there is the unbridled joy when you catch a homerun at a baseball game. Or so we imagine. Read more →
The Iron Range is about to learn what metro drivers have finally figured out. Roundabouts aren’t so bad. Read more →
It’s the chemical Oxybenzone, which the scientists say has the same effect as gasoline. It’s in your sunscreen. Read more →
Up until last year, students at MIT, recognizing the gravity of tradition, tossed a piano off a dorm roof each spring for more than 40 years. Why? Because they could.
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In the latest list, the newspaper reporter job retains its title, while ‘broadcaster’ leapfrogs over ‘logger” into second place. But are these really the worst jobs? Not likely. Read more →
Since 1872, the Worthington Daily Globe has been a daily newspaper, except for Sunday. Those days are over. Read more →
The Big Lake school board will meet tonight and they most certainly will remove a roadblock preventing the Big Lake High School’s trap shooting team photo from appearing in the yearbook. This, of course, assumes there’s a shred of common sense in Big Lake. Read more →
Janis Thompson is being inducted into the North Dakota High School Track and Field Hall of Fame next month. She was a top sprinter.
She was also a cheerleader whose death at North Dakota State in 1986 made schools take another look at the stunts cheerleaders were attempting. Read more →
The crews of medevac helicopters fly into the worst weather on dark nights because someone needs help. Those aboard longing for a long life, would do well to find another line of work. But those aboard have different values. That’s why I referred to them as ‘angels in helicopters’ when I wrote in December about Miles Weske’s recovery from a crash during bad weather in September.
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ESPN, which threw way too much money at sports leagues for the right to broadcast games, took its mistake out on its employees again today when it chopped some high-profile personalities, more than a year after it gutted 350 behind-the-camera employees. Read more →
There isn’t any room for nuance in the laws surrounding flying, not since 19 men hijacked airliners and flew them into buildings.
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Until today, few people likely thought of a sanitation worker as a victim of the Jamar Clark shooting in Minneapolis in November 2015. But today’s City Pages article on what happened to one of them — Alan Ditty — is a disturbing piece of journalism.
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At least in the short term, Corey Jacob, the homeless Rochester man whose van was smashed on Good Friday when it was hit by a drunk driver, is going to be OK. Read more →