Bob CollinsRep. Pat Garofalo has tweeted his way into another controversy. 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.
In its story about the Stanley Cup visiting Duluth yesterday, the Duluth News Tribune unintentionally gives us pause to think how much more excited we might be to go to work today if we had the gig Walt Neubrand has. Read more →
The end is near: The hour-long version of Sesame Street will soon be no more on PBS. Read more →
Some amazing footage of an enormous explosion at a fuel depot in China today. Read more →
If the obituary scandal out of Richmond isn’t a sign of the times, I really don’t know what is. Read more →
Minnesota may be about to acknowledge, finally, that cameras and microphones in the courtroom do not destroy the legal process. Read more →
The Atlantic is sure to roil the educational waters today with its signature article claiming that today’s college students are engaged in a war on ideas and words they don’t like. Read more →
A year ago, Stillwater’s Oasis Cafe caused an online firestorm when it added a 35-cent ‘fee’ onto every bill to pay for the increase in the state’s minimum wage.
The minimum wage has gone up again, but this time the cafe has simply raised prices and gotten rid of the fee, the Pioneer Press reports. Read more →
We must be getting somewhere in our continuing focus on obituaries that reveal a truer life than who someone worked for because multiple people have sent me Dorothy McElhaney’s final tribute today. Read more →
This is what our presidential campaign has come to. A Twitter fight. Read more →
It often seems as though someday being unemployed won’t be unusual. Those who have jobs will be the ones who are unique.
This seems particularly true in the manufacturing business, where robots and technology are replacing humans, who will be left to do … what, exactly? Read more →
Politico Media’s Capital New York has exposed a bit of the tension between podcasters and broadcasters in the public radio realm, including a brewing battle of the generations. Read more →
I’m not embarrassed by Teague because he brought shame to a university I embrace, or a state I love. I’m embarrassed because I’m a man.
Aren’t you? Read more →
Zach and Connor Kvalvog, of South Fargo, were on their way to basketball camp earlier this summer when they were killed in the crash on I-94 in Dalton, Minn., south of Fergus Falls.
Their dad had given them each $100 to spend on their outing, but when he and his wife received the personal items of the boys, the money was gone. Read more →
In western Massachusetts, a town’s insistence that a treehouse for a young man with cerebral palsy cannot be built is running into a buzzsaw of pushback from neighbors who say it should be. Read more →