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.
It is near impossible to ask how something like the murder-suicide in Orono could happen and who Gina Summers was when happiness existed in her and her family’s life. Not without being accused of forgiving the murder of a child. We get it.
We ask anyway, Read more →
Here’s a political ad — sort of — that won’t have you throwing things at the TV. Read more →
Typically, a lot of light in the sky isn’t conducive to seeing the Northern Lights, so the full (or nearly so) moon would normally be no friend of fans of the cosmos in Minnesota last evening.
Not that it mattered in Paynesville. Read more →
In Florida, the people who aren’t evacuating are preparing to withstand whatever Hurricane Irma has planned for them.
That includes Pam Brekke, of Sanford, who drove 30 miles to a Lowe’s when she heard the store was getting a shipment of 216 generators. Read more →
We’re going to go out on a limb and predict that Bemidji will not be in Minnesota Monthly’s final list of best Minnesota towns, not after a request to compete has caused a kerfuffle over whether the city is ‘Minnesota nice.’ Read more →
It probably felt good for partisans when Sen. Al Franken took a big step toward killing Minnesota Supreme Court Justice David Stras’ appointment to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.
Political payback feels awesome.
Read more →
What are the odds that there is a long-married couple who share the names of two hurricanes, whose story is every bit as compelling as the ones surrounding their meteorological namesakes? Read more →
Hailey Dawson was born with a rare congenital disease called Poland Syndrome, which affects the use of fingers. She was unable to use her right hand — her pitching hand — so the University of Nevada Las Vegas engineering department made her a 3D-printed device.
It worked. And she got a taste for the first pitch when she threw one out at a Baltimore Orioles game two years ago. Read more →
There’s a good mystery in your local bookstore. Someone is stealing books by beatnik authors. Read more →
It was the first day of kindergarten in the Bronx this week for Austin Tuozzolo. His father would’ve accompanied him to the bus stop. But he’s dead. Read more →
Something’s got to give on Saturday when the St. Scholastica football team takes on Greenville of Illinois, which lost last weekend 76-to-3. St. Scholastica lost to St. John’s University 98-doughnut. Read more →
It’s not often you see campaigning for changes to the law in an obituary, but the murder-suicide in Orono this week, as heartbreaking a story as there is, provides the rarity in today’s Star Tribune. Read more →
We’re suspicious of the growing online claims that the nation’s airlines are gouging people trying to escape Hurricane Irma.
So far, the only evidence of it happening are occasional tweets claiming the airlines are charging thousands of dollars for seats out of the region. Read more →
If you want to get a sense of the kind of expertise behind the scenes at an airline, take a look at Delta Airlines, which today did what some other airlines didn’t want to do: fly into, then out of, San Juan, Puerto Rico, which is about to get hammered by Hurricane Irma. Read more →
Rocori High School in Cold Spring, Minn., is banning the display of flags on vehicles of kids who drive to school starting on Monday. Read more →
Bob Collins