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.
Here’s a little secret that’s probably not a secret: Reporters miss a lot of stories that are right beneath our nose. Sometimes they — we — get so focused on what we think the news is that we miss the news. More often, a subject doesn’t have the cachet to get our attention. It’s an occupational habit.
Dental floss, it’s fair to say, is beneath most of us. Read more →
Metro Transit had a big chance to show off with last night’s opening of the Minnesota Vikings stadium in Minneapolis.
It blew it.
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The world has long been full of people who delight in yelling ‘jump’ when someone is perched on a building or bridge, preparing to die.
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Of those who defend freedom and protect our civil rights, no group is less appreciated than the public defender, a fact which allows governors to starve the system, denying rightful legal representation to the poor who are charged with crimes. Read more →
The Minnesota Supreme Court declared today that school districts can’t expel a student for violating a no-gun policy if the student didn’t willfully violate the policy. Read more →
I can assure you that I’ve spent much of the day today looking for some uplifting news story, as is the wont of NewsCut.
Unfortunately, there isn’t any. Quite the opposite in fact. Read more →
Perhaps you’ve noticed that in the last few days, the election of 2016 is no longer a contest between Republicans and Democrats.
In the last few days, the developing civil war within the GOP has spilled further out into the open and, to a degree, it was fascinating to watch. Read more →
Particularly in an election year, we’re always looking for things that define who we are.
It’s an effort doomed to failure from the start — we can’t be defined — but we persist anyway. Read more →
There should be an extra citation for bad excuses. Or a reward for the effort. Read more →
I often wish that Star Tribune columnist Lee Schafer’s work could find its way off the business pages and closer to the paper’s front page because his work is too stimulating to be relegated to one of the most ignored parts of the newspaper.
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We won’t ever know what prompted a woman to let go of the fence. We won’t ever know what led her to crawl through the hole and to decide that the world she lives in offers no hope. We won’t determine whether the society that saved her, also failed her.
We think the story is over. Read more →
He was surrounded by family and white pine, Aaron J. Brown writes this afternoon in a wonderfully touching memorial. Read more →
If drivers would simply behave differently, the main cause of traffic jams could be eliminated. Read more →
The Associated Press has exposed the dirty little secret your dentist has tried to keep while shaming you for not flossing daily. There’s no evidence flossing is beneficial. Read more →
It’s hard not to imagine what the family might have contributed to a better Iron Range had his family spent more than a year in the Iron Range town on his way to a better life. Read more →
Bob Collins