Bob Collins
Largely on the strength of overwhelming evidence from my former colleague Nikki Tundel, I’ve come to believe that as great as the Minnesota State Fair is, the Iowa State Fair is better. 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.
Snake River Shooting Products and Consulting Inc., has unveiled ammunition specifically designed to shoot down drones. Read more →
You can hardly tell by the free-for-all, take-all-the-money-you-get nature of presidential campaigns, but there actually still is a Federal Election Commision to oversee the rules of campaigning and it’s apparently not happy with all the less-than-serious candidates who have filed in the last week or so. Read more →
What does Car2Go owe Minneapolis and what do Minneapolis city officials owe the people of the city who could be denied access to the transportation? Read more →
If nothing else, at least the Black Lives Matter protest at the Minnesota State Fair will provide a reason for the media coverage at the Fair to be about something important. Read more →
Which is worse? An ex-NFL player advising rookies to always have a “fall guy” if they got into legal trouble? Or a sportswriter who sat on Cris Carter’s 2014 comments at an NFL rookies symposium? Read more →
This day had to happen sooner or later. The all-you-can-drink $1 milk at the Minnesota State Fair is no more. It’s going to cost $2. Read more →
A Minnesota Court of Appeals panel today ruled that surveillance video on Metro Transit buses is public information and ordered them released to a Twin Cities TV station. Read more →
Jacob Miles Solberg, of Erskine, Minn., is probably going to spend more time in prison for raping a co-worker in 2013 because the Minnesota Court of Appeals today ruled that being remorseful isn’t enough to get a break on his sentence. Read more →
Nobody’s public status benefits from passive voice like Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s. Read more →
On June 25, 1996, Daniel Danais got good and drunk, got in his car, and plowed into David Scannell, then 39, as he rode his bike in Quincy, Mass.
Scannell suffered a traumatic brain injury that left him in a coma until last Monday, when he died at age 58.
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Officials have not yet been able to find the body of a 17-year-old girl, who jumped from St. Paul’s High Bridge into the Mississippi River after texting ‘goodbye’ to a friend on Thursday.
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Everything you think you know about Woodbury is probably reinforced in this video, released yesterday by the city to try to get people to use less water. Read more →
Last spring, a man with ALS gave two girls he didn’t know $50 with the instruction to do some good with it.
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The Freedom From Religion Foundation this week called on 25 public universities — including the University of Wisconsin — to take a step toward disconnecting religion from the sport. Read more →