Bob CollinsA murderer is getting the nation’s attention today for taking his own life. If he hadn’t been a player in the National Football League, nobody would care. We should choose better heroes. Here’s one. 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.
The Rochester man lives on disability payments that allow him to spend only $300 a month on housing, the Rochester Post-Bulletin reports. That’s not enough, so Jacob lives in a 19-year-old van he bought with what little money he had two weeks ago.
On Good Friday, a drunk driver slammed into it, disabling it.
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Faribault has a big cat problem. The city has too many feral cats. That’s setting up a debate over whether the problem goes away by killing them or capturing them. Read more →
Heistad was the classic public radio storyteller whose work, fortunately, has reached a new audience in the last several months as MPR News has reaired some of his productions as part of the 50th anniversary celebration of the organization. Read more →
The new podcast, assuming the hosts — Robert Garcia and Adrian Bartos —
bring it all with them, could be the biggest disruption to the staid NPR brand in its history.
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Sad news, St. Paul baseball fans. We’ve missed out on our chance to pick up some slick jerseys worn by the St. Paul Gutteral Uff Da’s.
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Don’t you just hate it when you take $14,000 in cash to a car dealer, decide you don’t want to buy a car afterall, and when you put the bag of money on your roof while digging for your keys, you forget it’s there and drive off? Read more →
If not for people like Joe Crowley, the Catholic Church’s chronic problem of sexual abuse might never have found its believers.
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If the U.S. government actually were a business, it’d have to issue a 10-K filing with regulators — a report to shareholders — and we’d all get a look at how the business is doing.
This morning, former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer unveiled the results of his project to do just that and it landed with a bit of a thud. Read more →
You have to really hate somebody or something to wipe out trees planted at a veteran’s memorial project. But, suddenly, destroying trees is a “thing” now. Read more →
Konrad Reuland, a 29-year-old tight end for the Baltimore Ravens, died in mid-December of the brain aneurysm that struck him down in November. He wasn’t a great NFL star. He was waived seven times in a very brief career which is why, perhaps, his death merited a few paragraphs in the usual places. Read more →
No runner in the Boston Marathon will ever again wear number 261. It has now been retired in honor of the woman who once wore it, and ushered in the era of women’s running.
At a red light on Wednesday, Moorhead police officers looked out of a bus and saw not one, not two, not three, but four different drivers taking the opportunity to do a little texting.
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It’s hard to imagine a more difficult and stressful job than being a security monitor on the University of Minnesota campus, charged with keeping people from jumping off the Washington Avenue bridge. Read more →
Dick and Donna Mueller started the cheese curd craze with an iconic yellow building on Dan Patch Avenue, but they’re ready to retire. Read more →