Bob Collins
For one night, the game was perfect. For one night, there was crying in baseball.
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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.
Marilyn Hagerty is a treasure in the Upper Midwest, and her review today of the chicken oriental salad at Applebee’s is another instant classic. Read more →
A group of college kids rallied to keep a colleague, who was out of money, in school. In 24 hours, they raised enough money to keep their friend in college.
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Here we go, again: Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s name is being mentioned as a possible attorney general now that Eric Holder is calling it quits.
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NPR has apparently been getting a lot of pushback on the subject with each subsequent execution — beheading, if you will. Read more →
NPR’s latest cost-cutting has taken out a public radio icon — Robert Krulwich.
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The increase in biofuels is sparking an increase in theft of used grease at fast food joints and restaurants. Read more →
The lingering furor over Bill Simmons’ suspension confirms one other suspicion: A larger number of people who said they were done paying attention to the NFL are still paying attention. Read more →
When the Green Line light rail project started, businesses and property owners took a serious hit. Now they’re being charged for ‘improvements’ to the road. Read more →
A picture in the BWCA or other wilderness might cost you $1000 if you snap it without a permit. Is this a threat to First Amendment rights?
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Teri Tacheny’s effort is admirable and the results are inspiring. But she got the idea while watching the ‘lethargic’ gorillas at the zoo.
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The game didn’t mean anything at Target Field this afternoon. The Twins were never in a pennant race this year and this was the last game of the year for the team in Minnesota.
But it meant something to Phil Hughes. If Hughes got one man out in the 9th inning, he’d earn another $500,000 from the Twins under the terms of his contract, an incentive to stay healthy during the year and contribute to the squad. Read more →
Today’s Minnesota Supreme Court decision on the appeal of a murder conviction of Minneapolis gang member leads a reader to head-shaking moment.
The legal underpinnings and the decision surrounding the killing during the Juneteenth celebration in 2007 are almost secondary to the narrative of gang members’ disregard for human life. Certainly that doesn’t come as a surprise, but it assaults the senses nonetheless. Read more →
There’s a line that schools seem to blur between history and propaganda. If they didn’t, more of us would’ve grown up knowing that Abraham Lincoln ordered the largest mass execution in the nation’s history, for example. Or we’d know that Lake Calhoun is named after an ardent supporter of slavery, state’s rights, and the architect of the forced removal of Native Americans from their land. It’s not the sort of thing we can be proud of.
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Jared McCallum, originally from Florida and now a Knoxville resident, is trying to hike the entire 2,180 miles of the Appalachian Trail and paddle the entire 2,350 miles of the Mississippi River in the same year. Read more →