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.
Newspapers face a big challenge when the big game goes late. Wait too long to get the paper out, and the people complain when the paper doesn’t show up on time. The Boston Globe scurried to get their Florida edition out in the Naples area — where Boston money spends the winter. It documented the Read more →
What do you do if you get on a New York subway train and finding swastikas on every ad?
In a post on Facebook on Saturday, Gregory Locke, an attorney, said you look uncomfortably at each other, and then get to work. Read more →
The Minnesota Court of Appeals today reaffirmed one of the most ignored vehicle laws in the state: When it’s raining, you have to turn on your headlights and tail lamps. Read more →
For years, Star Tribune legend Sid Hartman warned his legions against the Twin Cities becoming ‘a cold Omaha.’ Maybe that’s not such a bad thing. Read more →
Judging by the relative silence in the area, Minnesotans didn’t see the meteor that streaked across the upper Midwest sky around 1:30 this morning. Read more →
He was the voice of the Gophers for generations. Read more →
Three ads extolling American values have got the patriots stirred up. No, not those Patriots. Read more →
Luke Burbank, the public radio guy, found ‘sport stacking’, and finally there’s a sport for your kid that won’t break the bank. Read more →
Dad is a partner in a law firm. Mom is a pastor. Both have college degrees. They’re raising three sons in a “safe” Dallas neighborhood. They’re living the dream and doing, as Frances Cudjoe Waters — the mother — everything America says they should do.
And yet, they suffer from racism in the country that refuses to acknowledge a basic truth: No matter their credentials or accomplishments, they’re still black. Read more →
We are living in a new age of discourse in the United States. Disruption is in; dialogue is out.
This is presenting an increasing challenge to blogs and websites that still allow comments in the belief that individual perspectives add value. Many sites, as has been documented here many times, have simply given up in the recognition that in the age of disruption, it is a lost cause. Read more →
Ray Lund, a mailman, is 79 years old — he’ll be 80 this summer — and still working, or, at last, he was until the end of the week. His supervisors seemed to suggest that when he goes, an approach to working will go with him.
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Gov. Mark Dayton is reportedly going to spend the weekend evaluating his options for treatment of his prostate cancer. The possibilities are surgery or radiation, MPR’s Brian Bakst reports.
What’s to decide? Read more →
The Star Tribune speculates today on what singers might be headlining the halftime show when the Super Bowl makes a stop in Minneapolis next year. Undoubtedly, were he still alive, Prince would get the gig, though it would be hard to exceed his performance 10 years ago tomorrow, the greatest Super Bowl halftime show in history.
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Kellyanne Conway’s citation of a massacre in Bowling Green — a massacre that didn’t ever happen — has certainly spawned a fair amount of head-scratching and jokes on the Interwebs. Read more →
Rob Caskey, 48, hasn’t seen his mother in 30 years. He didn’t even know if she was still alive and, for sure, he didn’t know she was living in Duluth. Read more →
Bob Collins