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.
If there’s one thing people don’t much care for, it’s the media getting a little too full of themselves.
Saint Paul Pioneer Press writer Brian Murphy might have found that out when he weighed in Marshawn Lynch’s one-answer-for-every-question performance at Super Bowl media day. Read more →
A Canadian corporation is holding an online promotion to get people talking about mental illness and eliminate what the company says is a stigma against it by virtue of the thought that mental illness is a character flaw, a weakness, if you will. Read more →
Back in the day, it was relatively easy to find out who made bomb threats in our high school. Authorities would start by finding out which teachers were giving major tests or had big assignments due that day, and then pick up the usual suspects in each class until one of them confessed Read more →
We’ve reached the part of the Super Bowl season when companies release their ads, garnering more attention than a TV ad probably should.
And we’re pretty OK with that. Read more →
For a week, the Rochester Post Bulletin reports, Jadalynn Haugen debated whether to spent her $20 of birthday money on candy, or donate it to the Plainview Fire Department to help buy equipment that can resuscitate pets caught in a fire? Read more →
The big storm in Massachusetts has rekindled an old debate. Read more →
One of the country’s leading manufacturer’s of drones/quadcopters might have just shown the way to break the logjam surrounding how the devices can be regulated in a safe manner. Read more →
They’re digging out from three feet of snow in New England today. And a principal at a private school in Rhode Island is getting the attention he craved with another parody no-school announcement. Read more →
The Duluth News Tribune is the first newspaper out of the gate with an editorial panning Gov. Dayton’s transportation proposal, which includes raising the metro sales tax, increasing the license tab fees, and adding a gas tax. Read more →
Back in the infancy of the Internet, the experts told us it would give the voiceless a voice, empowering people in a way we can’t imagine.
We blew the chance. Read more →
In last year’s cold, not many people finished the grueling Arrowhead 135. This year was a different story. Read more →
It was media day at the Super Bowl today, a day that has not once — ever — given sportswriters any insight into the upcoming game. Ever.
Read more →
Sometime in June or July, if things work out as she hopes, Maxine Renning of Los Angeles will ride her bike into Minneapolis. She admits she’s not much of a cyclist but by then she will be. She’ll be riding from Baltimore and will stop here on her way to Seattle as part of a 4,000-mile ride to support people fighting cancer. That seems to be her specialty.
Read more →
Employees at a South Saint Paul company might well be jubilant today. They helped save the lives of a pilot of a Cirrus airplane that ran out of fuel off the coast of Hawaii yesterday.
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Glendale, Arizona — where the Super Bowl will be played next Sunday — provides a cautionary tale for cities trying to be a destination by investing heavily in sports franchises. It’s a money loser. Read more →
Bob Collins