Bob Collins
Here are the topics and guests you’ll hear on MPR News today. Read more →
MPR News Reflections and observations on the news
By Bob Collins
Bob Collins retired from Minnesota Public Radio in 2019 after 12 years of writing NewsCut and pointing out to complainants that posts weren’t news stories. A son of Massachusetts, he was a news editor 1992-1998, created the MPR News regional website in 1999, invented the popular Select A Candidate, started several blogs, and every day lamented that his Minnesota Fantasy Legislature project never caught on.
‘Joe Frank is what radio in its wildest dreams wishes it could be,’ Harry Shearer said of Joe Frank, who died yesterday at age 79, leaving behind a few inspired people who remain in the business. Read more →
The lure of the Super Bowl ad has been fading in recent years, perhaps as the suspense of the actual game has increased. But Super Bowl ads aren’t what they once were, forcing ad agencies to come up with something more clever.
Now, Skittles has. Read more →
She was Christopher Steele when she was born in Minnesota. When her parents split when she was 5, she went into the foster care system and, when she was in the fifth grade, went to live with Al and Madelyn Sisson. He was a Rochester, Minn., cop. Read more →
Scott Stanfield sometimes dealt with some of society’s worst when he worked as a cop. But being a boys basketball coach and dealing with some parents is “way worse,” he tells the Brainerd Dispatch. Read more →
In North Dakota, the law gives women the right to breastfeed if they act ‘in a discreet and modest manner,’ but it does not define what is discreet and modest.
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Julia Nepper went to college when she was 12 years old because her parents looked at the education she was getting and didn’t like it.
She just got her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin. Read more →
Jorge Garcia didn’t get a say when his family brought him to the United States illegally. He was only 10. Although that’s too old to qualify under the so-called DACA program, he’s the new face of the deportation program that is rounding up people and sending them to a country they don’t know. Read more →
The Pioneer Press’ Mary Divine writes that Laura Miron Mendele, who grew up going to the Withrow Ballroom in Washington County, has purchased the ballroom that closed late last year, and plans to reopen it for the polka dance in March.
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Here are the topics and guests you’ll hear today on MPR News. Read more →
The takeaway here is that there are an awful lot of football fans who take video of each other watching television.
Also: There are a lot of questionable interior design decisions. Read more →
Here’s a list of topics and guests you’ll hear today on MPR News. Read more →
Not much can make a person feel better about the future than seeing a fifth-grader tear up at the story of injustice.
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In the end, it was easier for NPR to use an obscenity than it was during the presidential campaign to use a word that is far less offensive: ‘lie’. Read more →
Thanks to the movie ‘I, Tonya’, Tonya Harding, the former Olympic figure skater has become a sympathetic figure. Hollywood can create any reality.
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