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.
‘I didn’t want to be a journalist so much as I wanted to be an NPR reporter.’
There’s a lot packed into a quote like that, which is why it should come as no surprise it belongs to Wade Goodwyn, the Texas reporter for NPR who has a cult-like following among public radio fans, me included. Read more →
A new study, examining two dozen previous reports, finds that 90 percent of the household dust examined contained 10 toxic chemicals. Read more →
The Duluth News Tribune reports the wreckage of the Antelope, a schooner that went down with its load of coal in 1897, has been found and it’s ‘spectacularly intact.’
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Surely Ramsey County and some of the people it serves can come to an agreement over a once trash-strewn lot that neighbors have turned into an urban garden. It’s just a garden, after all.
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Despite what you may have heard, there are limits to free speech.
In Minneapolis, for example, it’s eight square feet. That’s the total square feet allowed for any political lawn sign.
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There were good times in the history of Minnesota sports broadcasting when Kevin Harlan was the voice of the Minnesota Timberwolves.
He went on to become a big national star because of his play-by-play prowess.
But he’s now most famous for what he did last night during a boring football game.
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Improv Everywhere had quite a challenge. Create a phony press conference and then ask silly questions when someone stepped to the microphones.
It didn’t look any more foolish than the real thing.
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A report says the airport will continue to focus on small private airplanes — business jets usually go to Flying Cloud or nearby Anoka-Blaine — and it stresses that it doesn’t see downgrading the role of the airport. But it’s recommending some runways be eliminated and the property opened to development.
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Somehow, Baby Boomers did OK with their career choices before becoming the helicopter parents who tried to direct every aspect of the lives of their precious flowers, attempting to keep them from stumbling, falling, and learning how to pick themselves up again.
Now they’re the nation’s grandparents and newspaper columnists, offering insufferable expertise to a generation that’s had plenty of it. Read more →
Acknowledging that authorities had little choice but to take the report of gunfire seriously, we are nonetheless forced to accept that we’ve entered a new era of fear in America when bubblewrap causes the lockdown of schools.
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Madeline ‘Dutch’ Swain died of Parkinson’s on Friday, with her daughters by her side.
They had to say goodbye and make plans for what would happen upon her death, the scripture at the service, instructions for people not to wear black, and a notation in an obituary that in lieu of flowers or memorials, people should just commit a random act of kindness and post it on Facebook. Read more →
If nothing else comes from the growing protests by professional and high school football players during the National Anthem, at least some coaches/educators are getting schooled in the Constitution. Read more →
The owner of Hillcrest Terrace sued then Star Tribune reporter Paul McEnroe following his April 2013 story that the facility left a man with developmental disabilities and mental illness ‘alone and sitting in filth.’ The story was based on a not-yet-released Minnesota Department of Health report that was leaked to McEnroe. Read more →
Four inches above the knee. That’s the updated dress code for middle- and high-school students in Bemidji, and some parents suggest by students, they mean girls. Read more →
She and her young daughter have been trying to move out of the apartment she and Philando Castile shared. But when she inspected it, and sounded almost as bad as the place she desperately wanted to leave, the Washington Post says.
But it’s the section about another person who was in the car that is the most compelling — Dae’Anna, the four-year-old. Read more →
Bob Collins