Bob Collins
Here’s the video shown before tonight’s Minnesota Timberwolves game honoring long-time coach Flip Saunders, who died last week of complications from cancer treatment.
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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.
On Saturday, Lauren Turner and Indianapolis’ Brebeuf Prep girls soccer team played for a state title.
And Lauren Turner’s mom got to watch her daughter, the goalie.
Stephanie Turner was given just days to live two weeks ago. Read more →
Last night’s 60 Minutes report on heroin was certainly an eye-opener in an area of the country that often feels it’s insulated from many ills: the suburbs. Read more →
Mary Lucia is coming back to The Current after more than six months of trying to put a stalker where he belonged. Read more →
Here’s the immediate payoff to turning back the clocks: We get to see the iconic Pillsbury sign in Minneapolis an hour earlier.
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Gov. Mark Dayton is promising to remake the face of Minnesota state government, saying it’s too white. Read more →
Is there any other sport besides running marathons where winning isn’t a goal?
We have a special place in our NewsCut heart for people who run 26 miles with nothing but the intention to have a blast along the way. Read more →
An East Grand Forks teacher who was suspended for criticizing Somalis who don’t show up for their English-as-a-second-language (ESL) classes says he wrote his letter to administrators to ‘brainstorm’ ways to teach the class. Read more →
It’s a silly notion, however, that a pilot would be able to read a registration number on a drone; I was too busy to try to read the “N-number” on the little Cessna filling my windshield, and those letters are as high as a drone is wide.
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NewsCut set a record for web traffic in October, although — when we stop to think about it — it wasn’t really a month for earth-shattering news. But interesting stories don’t need to destroy earth. Here are the ones you selected (in descending order) this month:
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There’s been another confrontation on the mean streets of Washington, D.C., between a police officer and the public. And a dance-off settled it. Read more →
Occassionally, we get fleeting ‘West Wing-style’ glimpses of what is possible, even if they’re usually mere rhetorical flourishes.
Today provided one of those moments when the U.S. House of Representatives elected a new speaker of the house.
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Maybe it wouldn’t kill you just once, ‘pathletes’ to take a lesson from the — ducking here — ‘burbs. Read more →
Thanks to John Millea at the Minnesota State High School League, we know a little more about the person responsible for stenciling a large #11 on the field at Cleveland High School last Saturday for its winner-goes-to-state game against Renville West. The number honored Brandon Limones, a Renville West player who died in March. Millea Read more →
Jerry Kill is fair game for the typical judgments of media, which needs to keep a hot story going somehow. But who are we to declare how other people live? Read more →