Bob CollinsMikhael Teryohin, an engineer at a software company in Fargo, is worried about people across the border and the threat they represent to the hard-working people in his area. They could, for example, steal their jobs. 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.
Minneapolis woman: Staying silent hasn’t made the emotional scars go away, she writes, ‘and it hasn’t held the men who victimized me responsible for what they did to and stole from me. I’ve realized all too late that our voices are our strongest asset.’ Read more →
Star Tribune columnist Patrick Reusse appears to have stepped in it again with a column today in which he lambastes the Minnesota Twins players for celebrating when they win a game. The Star Tribune sports department must be an utterly joyless place because this is the sort of thing that Reusse says is shameful. Parents: Read more →
There’s really no way to avoid a public spectacle when you’re a baseball player and you take one in the babymakers. Read more →
Tomorrow night, people will sacrifice their children to give him polite applause and then, like Ortiz, they’ll move on.
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It was surprising that a journalistically conservative news organization like the Associated Press would make the announcement it made Monday night, but it counted the noses, had the data, and reported what it knew. The superdelegates in the Clinton camp aren’t bound — as normal delegates are — but the reality is at this stage of the game, they weren’t going to change their minds. Nonetheless, it felt like it was at least on the edges of ‘hey, close enough’ journalism. Read more →
Rep. Tony Cornish is getting plenty of attention and, judging by the comments on the Star Tribune website, applause for his letter to the editor in the paper today. Read more →
Robert Rearson, of St. Paul, was a flyboy of the first order for Northwest Airlines, although he wasn’t a pilot.
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here’s quite a brouhaha in North Dakota because the interim president of a university made a political endorsement, igniting a debate over whether the heads of academic institutions should be involved in partisan politics. Read more →
The Toronto Star faced an unusual ethical dilemma when Raveena Aulakh left instructions that the paper should not write about her death.
She took her own life in late May.
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A St. Cloud lawyer wants Minnesota’s two U.S. senators to get behind a push that would allow student loan debt to be wiped out in bankruptcy. Read more →
The crosswalks in or near downtown are virtually lawless as drivers violate the law with impunity. Read more →
If you’re a kid and you’re lucky and you like baseball, you grew up in Owatonna, because then you probably learned about the game from Chuck Fuller, known as ‘Mr. Baseball’ around those parts. If you didn’t know him, maybe you knew someone like him in your youth, again, assuming you were lucky. Read more →
People can obviously disagree on the answer. But we can’t have that discussion if nobody is pressing politicians to explain what is it specifically about an issue or policy that makes racism an acceptable alternative. Read more →
Austin Hancock, who opened fire in a school cafeteria of an Ohio junior-senior high school in February, was sentenced yesterday to six years in the Ohio Department of Youth Services. He’s 15. He’ll be released when he’s 21. Read more →