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.
Listeners to a Story Corps episode on NPR about what happened when a man met the imprisoned man who killed his son in a shooting spree on a Western Massachusetts campus apparently noticed the same thing about the episode that I did when I wrote about it the day it aired: There was a lot left out. Read more →
No matter how bad 2017 has been, no matter how many of your heroes have fallen, remember this: We still have Tom Hanks. When he says “nice knobs,” he’s talking typewriters.
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As it has for several decades, the International Space Station is going around and around, rarely making news.
Occasionally, however, something happens aboard the station that gives us pause to consider its example. Read more →
Unwittingly, perhaps, Alexandria state Rep. Mary Franson provided students from Alexandria Area High School with a reality check about politics in 2017: Elected representatives serve only the people who voted for them and agree with them, the principles of America be damned. Read more →
Here’s a list of today’s topics and guests on MPR News. Read more →
Trisha Murphy, single mother of four in Sullivan, Maine who’s picking up shifts at the local Denny’s while carrying a course load at school, was fretting on Saturday. Her Christmas shopping wasn’t done, her car had been towed with a $735 bill and she’d barely made it to work on time. Read more →
There’s no real significance to the list, of course. Traffic is enhanced or depressed by any number of factors, mostly involving who picks up and amplifies a post. This year was no exception. Read more →
Mary Louise Kelly, who made a name for herself weeks ago with a grilling of her boss in the wake of a sexual misconduct scandal, is the new anchor of NPR’s All Things Considered. Read more →
For 118 years now, the Audubon Society has used people power around the country to hold a census of birds. In Duluth, Milton Blomberg checked ‘boreal owl’ off the list.
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In this week’s episode of comedian Bill Murray’s Facebook show touring minor league ballparks, we learn that the University of St. Thomas Freshman Immersion Program taught the kids how to do ‘the wave.’
Oh, UST, how could you? Read more →
A Rochester brewpub’s beer label is intended to show that the perception of women is not what it may seem. Or so Grand Rounds Brewing CEO Tessa Leung tells
KIMT, defending the label against an assertion by a local pastor that it’s offensive. Read more →
Here’s the list of topics and guests you’ll hear today on MPR News. Read more →
There appears to be an opening for Minnesota’s favorite icon and even though he’s retiring, it’s still not too late to properly honor Mark Seeley, the U of M climatologist who can make you feel better about just about anything. Read more →
Sharon Zimmerman, a University of Minnesota graduate, couldn’t sleep one night in early October. So, up late (or early), she went outside for a respite. That’s when she came face to face with the ‘Tubbs fire’ in Santa Rosa, a sudden wind-whipped wildfire that wiped out the California suburb.
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It’s been awhile since we’ve had a good obituary to ponder but Mariel Kinsey has provided us with one, even if she had to go to extreme lengths to do so. She died in Ashfield, Mass., last Friday, but not before writing her own obituary. Read more →
Bob Collins