Bob Collins
Hayley Orlowski is full of hope that she can do something about the number of military veterans who take their own life every day, 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.
So this is what it’s come to, eh?
Americans dropping to their knees to beg the leader of another country to run for president of the United States. Read more →
NPR, which was the one of the first major media companies to embrace podcasting, now seems afraid of it. Read more →
If there’s a red-flag word in any headline that should keep people from getting too excited, it’s the word ‘may.’
Still, this headline can still make a jaw or two drop, we learned this afternoon. Read more →
If your workplace is anything like the World Headquarters of NewsCut, you have two kinds and only two kinds of colleagues: Those that stand up at their desks and those who sit down. Read more →
The Chicago White Sox this week blew a giant hole in the image of baseball, fathers, and sons when a player retired rather than accept the team’s edict that his son couldn’t hang out in the locker room where he even has his own locker.
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Stillwater is reconsidering the question of whether we have the freedom to park our car on the front lawn if that’s what we want to do. Read more →
There’s so much more to the recently-concluded Minnesota State High School hockey tournament than hockey hair, and couple of filmmakers have perfectly captured the essence of late winter in the state of hockey. Read more →
These are often academic questions in the political arena, but as the state’s residents grow older, “how we die” will merit significant conversations we’re unable to have now.
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An activities director of a senior center wanted to figure out how to get her hockey-loving clients to a hockey game, so the Chicago Blackhawks brought a hockey game to her, including cheerleaders, mascots, and the announcer. Read more →
It shouldn’t be taking this long to overturn an Army decision denying women who served as WASPs the dignity of an Arlington National Cemetery burial. Read more →
Times are apparently pretty good in Charlton, Mass., a small town in south central Massachusetts where a roving band of rappers is scaring kids. Read more →
The Jolly Green Giant is now officially dead after a good run in the Minnesota River Valley. Read more →
St. Paul is not a pedestrian-friendly city. An average of one pedestrian is struck by a vehicle every other day.
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Nobody knows how to sell you a box of cereal like General Mills, whose various ad campaigns for Cheerios have tapped into social change and, at least to some degree, propelled it.
General Mills Canada this month, a Cheerios-branded campaign focused on another species: bees.
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