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.
Gary Bipes is living a charmed life. Or maybe it’s an unlucky life. It’s hard to tell the difference sometimes.
Bipes, whom I met for the first time five years ago,when I was doing a radio talk show during the gigantic Oshkosh airplane show, survived a plane crash yesterday afternoon in Hector, the West Central Tribune reports today. Read more →
Even if this bombing turns out not to be a crime of hate, there have been plenty that have and it’s going to take more than leading to stop the march toward sectarian violence. It’s going to take some following. Read more →
There are some photographs you can waste a Friday afternoon staring at. Read more →
Every now and again I am reminded that although the possibilities of new technology are endless, the advances can come at the expense of the documentation of our past. And that in our digital age, history evaporates quickly. Read more →
Sometimes the rain delay is more entertaining than the baseball game. Read more →
It’s never too late to start, of course, but there are nowhere near enough people on the earth whose story makes you wish you were a better person.
John Carlson, who died this week in the explosion at Minnehaha Academy in Minneapolis, was clearly one. Read more →
There were many reasons why Target Center in Minneapolis was one of the biggest dumps in the NBA.
The troughs in men’s bathrooms was one. Read more →
From time to time on NewsCut, we have considered the proposition that one cannot pursue one’s passion and also make a living. Pick one or the other when deciding on a career, kids.
But then we see a story like Keanon Kyles’, who makes his living as an opera singer.
Also as a janitor. Read more →
Built in the early ’70s, the Julia Belle Swain was a fixture on the Mississippi and Tennessee Rivers until its last voyage (under its own power, anyway) in 2008, when it became a victim of the economic meltdown in America.
Its financially strapped owners were allowed to dock it in La Crosse, and there it sat for five years, not getting any healthier
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The Legislature had a chance to increase the odds of people like Laura Elena Soto Silva getting home to her kids. It chose not to. Read more →
We are still a species that will drop what we’re doing and spend whatever money it takes on a skunk, if it needs our help. As long as it doesn’t bite us. Read more →
The next time you get frustrated because weather prevents your flight from leaving on time, think of this video that was made public today. Read more →
The Wall Street Journal reports this afternoon that there are people walking among us who don’t know that a person can get TV “over the air.” Read more →
Humanity has an ethical question it’s going to have to think about now with today’s announcement that scientists in Oregon have successfully edited genes in human embryos to repair a disease-causing mutation that often kills young athletes.
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If you have a friend with whom you can converse by saying nothing, the words will strike a chord. If you don’t, they’ll make you wonder where you went wrong.
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Bob Collins