Bob Collins
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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.
Not everyone deserves a microphone or an audience. And unless news organizations are willing to demand a standard of civility, they’re right to do what they are basically doing: pulling the plug on their audience.
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August is a pretty slow month for news, which might explain why newsies are — again — respewing the Old Farmer’s Almanac winter predictions.
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He acknowledges in his op-ed in the Star Tribune today that his bar for ‘nice’ is pretty low; he came to accept the rudeness of prison as normal… almost nice.
Still, he writes today, Minnesota is pretty nice for a person trying for a second chance. Read more →
Cortez Riley, of St. Cloud, may be on to something that should catch on.
He just turned 28, the St. Cloud Times says, so to celebrate, he set up a week of events to get his family and friends to join him in volunteering around his community.
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If there’s someone who should catch a break in this state, it’s Gabriele Grunewald, a professional runner who once ran the fifth-fastest time in the 1500 meters in University of Minnesota history just a day after she was diagnosed with cancer.
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Duluth still doesn’t have a fancy system for high-speed Internet. But there’s good news. There are no kids running around there named Google Fiber. Read more →
New Zealand’s Nikki Hamblin and the USA’s Abbey D’Agostino collided during their heat in the 5,000 meter running event. Down they both went, their Olympic dreams dashed.
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If the brake pedal is on the left in our cars — spoiler alert: it is — then why do we brake with our right foot?
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Everything you want to know about what it’s like to be a father you can find in the expression of Chuck Van Gordon, who was at Detroit’s Comerica Field last night when a video message from his daughter, Melissa, was played on the video board. Read more →
Emmanuel Matadi, a Johnson High grad, is going to run the 200-meter dash at the Olympics in Rio today and his mother is going to see him do it, and that should sustain us through another day in the drumbeat of awful news.
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Maybe “Hat Trick” just wanted a better view of the Highway 53 bridge construction outside Virginia, Minn. But it was an ill-advised trip. (Spoiler: happy ending). Read more →
It happened in Enfield, Conn., on Friday when emergency responders infuriated dogs everywhere. Read more →
In Norway, the sport is called dødsing – or ‘death diving’. Read more →
If you watched the coverage of the Olympics last night, you got a look at the first trailer for the movie Hidden Figures, which, unfortunately, doesn’t come out until January. Read more →