Bob CollinsThe world is populated by decent people, but today — unlike almost every other day — it seems impossible to prove the assertion. 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.
There’s a beautiful symmetry in Boyd Huppert’s KARE 11 story last night about the final goodbyes between Erling and Emmett, the now six-year-old boy and his former 91-year-old neighbor. Read more →
Drink up, people! We’ve got some serious uniting to do, still. Read more →
Game 6 of the World Series is tonight and, if you believe the national media, there’ll be a Game 7 tomorrow night. And then, that’ll be it for baseball. It will disappear during the months of darkness, surely no coincidence.
The presidential campaign of 2020, however, will begin a week from today.
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Nothing seems to be working when it comes to getting people to stop texting and driving so there’s at least a minimal level of understanding for the authorities in the Broadhead, Wis., school district — southwest of Milwaukee — who told students at the beginning of the school day last week that four of their friends were dead.
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The Superior Court of Pennsylvania made the ruling this week in the case of Jason Roy Waugaman, 35, who had dropped his kids off at his wife’s home during a custody exchange. She stood in front of his truck, he hit the gas to scare her and drove off while giving her the obscene gesture. Read more →
It’s been eight years since the United States elected a black president, and some people are still depicting him in a lynching.
This time, it’s fans at last weekend’s University of Wisconsin game against Nebraska. Read more →
When his dad, Rey, died in the spring of 2015, Sam Heras, a 17-year-old, had to give up football at his Irondale high school to help support his mother. They’d been notified they were losing their house. No time for games. Last week, his mother died. Read more →
Like or not, Hennepin County sheriff Rich Stanek was within his legal right to send Hennepin County deputies and equipment to North Dakota to put down a protest by Native Americans against an oil pipeline near their land. Read more →
We cop to feeling some hope for normalcy in the country whenever we see a president of the United Stand outside the White House while 4,000 Washington DC school kids file by to get candy from him. That some dressed like Scooby Doo, only makes us swell with pride. Read more →
Steve Henneberry, who works at the University of Minnesota, drove to Chicago a few days ago even though he didn’t have a ticket to the World Series and probably couldn’t afford what the scalpers were selling them for.
But Steve had something better, it turned out. He had a long-time friend. Read more →
It’s hard to say for sure why Boyd Huppert’s story of Emmett and Erling struck such a nerve with most of us when it first aired a few years ago. Read more →
At first, it seemed like a mistake on Saturday’s (and Sunday’s) obituary page in the Star Tribune.
Two people, same picture. Some mistake. Read more →
Until the secret was revealed on Saturday, nobody knew who was behind perhaps the most popular feature in the St. Paul Pioneer Press. In revealing it, we also learned that it is on borrowed time. Read more →
This is some amazing video from a passenger aboard the American Airlines jet that caught fire while on a take-off roll at O’Hare this afternoon.
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