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.
Runners World reports today that it’s uncovered cheating at qualifying marathons, thanks in part to a Facebook post a man in Pennsylvania made last year, lamenting that his kid’s absence from school to watch him in the marathon wouldn’t be excused. Read more →
Curly Haughland, of Bismarck, N.D., makes a compelling reason why you shouldn’t pay much attention to those lectures about your duty to vote in primary elections: You don’t matter. Read more →
He lives in an old farmhouse on 40 acres he bought for $5 an acre years ago. That’s valuable land these days, and so Barth has given it away to provide more music for kids in school, the newspaper reports today.
Read more →
Maybe Gabriel will achieve his dream of flight someday, maybe not. Many of his neighbors watch his attempts and laugh at his folly. But he now has the knowledge to build a plane at his fingertips, courtesy of two brothers from Dayton who heard similar laughter, and present-day pilots who know how to make it stop Read more →
Even Americans who lived through the duck-and-cover years of the Cold War must wonder every now and again whether we really have any clue at all how close the United States is to a shooting war with a super power at any given moment. Read more →
It is the end of the NBA season and the end of the line for “Black Mamba,” Kobe Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers, the recipient of a generation’s worth of hate, not always because of basketball. Read more →
If you spend any time at all watching commercial TV, perhaps you’ve marveled at the notion that some people get up and go to work in the morning and sit in meetings and come up with the most inane ideas to turn into a product commercial.
Someone got up one morning, went to work, and thought this was good idea. Read more →
We may never again hear the kind of testimony at a hearing for a Supreme Court nominee that we heard in the October 1991 hearings for Justice Clarence Thomas. Read more →
Victims of sexual abuse and assault at St. Olaf in Northfield had hoped a meeting to address complaints that the school was ignoring them would begin to change things on campus, but after a closed meeting they say they’re ‘disheartened’ by the response.
Read more →
The Rock ‘n Roll food fight that started last weekend when long-time Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame critic Steve Miller was inducted into the Hall of Fame has intensified.
Miller called the people who run the music industry ‘gangsters and crooks.’
Read more →
It is increasingly a part of America’s culture that when your sports team wins a championship, you go flip cars over; burning them is optional, apparently.
Read more →
Rockport Analytics estimated $338 million in new spending would be generated by the 2018 Super Bowl in Minneapolis. Skeptics, though, say Super Bowls typically don’t deliver on the upbeat forecasts.
Read more →
The Duluth Police Department had a reasonable request on Facebook today: Please stop throwing your used hypodermic needles away in a city park. Read more →
ONE OF THE LAST VESTIGES OF OLD-SCHOOL RADIO IS FALLING: THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE HAS ANNOUNCED THE ERA OF ALL-CAPS IS OVER. Read more →
Ralphie May, the comic who was booted off the schedule at a venue in Bemidji, is finding new fame by being infamous. Read more →
Bob Collins