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.
With increasing frequency, some large envelopes have been arriving in my mail lately. My mother has been sending me her treasures — the remnants of my childhood. She’s 93 now and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out why, particularly since she’s been voicing alarm that she’ll die one of these days and nobody will find her. There are things to do, and, for her, one of them is distributing her keepsakes. Read more →
It’s been a little over three years since I first told you the story of Joel Beeson of West Virginia, whose difficulty getting a liver transplant from a living donor is typical of many in his situation. Here’s an update on how he’s doing. Read more →
I tried out a new burger joint in the Saint Paul skyway a few weeks ago. The food, though overpriced, was decent, especially by Saint Paul skyway standards.
I’ll never go back, however.
Why? Because after you give the cashier your credit card, she turns the monitor around so you can add a tip. Read more →
Stevie Wonder brought his big tour to the Twin Cities Sunday night. But a smaller performance at New Salem Missionary Baptist Church stole the show. Read more →
For the last 10 months, CBS has been following the experimental therapy, in which a modified polio gene — modified so it wouldn’t reproduce — “wakes up” the body’s immune system to attack cancer. Read more →
Whatever progress Americans have made in understanding and accepting mental illness — and it wasn’t much — has been fairly well undone by the breathless coverage of last week’s Germanwings Airbus crash in the French Alps. Read more →
We are appropriately reminded from time to time to be careful what we put online because the Internet is forever, and people in the future can find our past.
That’s also its strong suit.
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It’s not fashionable to like newspapers anymore, but Baird Helgeson’s tweet today is a solid reminder of the daily miracle that happens each day. Read more →
In Wichita, Michael Kelley, who has Down Syndrome and autism, plays on a school’s special needs basketball team.
His mom bought the young man a varsity letter jacket like other kids wear.
The principal made him remove it. Read more →
Writer Jay Gabler, who I’m happy to say is a public radio colleague, pretty well sums up the student loan situation, which generally gets very little sympathy from the older crowd for some reason. Read more →
The Homer Tribune in Alaska and the person who wrote the obit of Donald Malcom Jr., get our admiration in our continuing search for the properly-crafted obituary.
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A Woodbury school, operated by several school districts, will reinstate its band and orchestra program after initially disbanding in the wake of the layoff of the only teacher licensed to teach it. Read more →
The FAA medical certificate system discourages many pilots from seeking help for medical problems. Read more →
Indiana’s governor signs a bill providing legal cover for businesses and institutions who don’t want to do business with gay and lesbian customer. Read more →
Almost every news organization in the Twin Cities has a policy against naming suspects, and almost every one ignores it when it’s convenient to do so. This is not generally how ethics in journalism works. Read more →
Bob Collins