Bob Collins
Despite a conflict of interest, CBS pressed NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell hard on how he dealt with Ray Rice, the Baltimore Ravens player who beat his wife and was fired this week. 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.
Fargo police chief Keith Ternes is under public scrutiny this week after the Fargo Forum published a story on Sunday about morale in the department where eight cops have resigned this year. Read more →
Homelessness as an issue has been increasing since the ’80s. Millions of stories have been produced and yet it’s the one issue that people walk away from without any sense of obligation. If anything, we’ve become desensitized to the problem. Read more →
Minneapolis is after a kid’s tree house. Read more →
Authorities in New York arrested a Long Island man today and charged him with supplying the painkillers that led to former Minnesota Wild player Derek Boogaard’s death in his Minneapolis apartment in May 2011. Read more →
With any luck at all, this video will make you pay a little more attention when you’re driving today. Read more →
The twin ball in Darwin weighs 17,400 pounds, extends 40 feet around, is 11 feet high and has been hailed as the world’s largest ball of twine.
Is it? Read more →
You probably only get one chance in a lifetime — if that — to meet the leader of the free world.
Don’t blow it. Read more →
That it’s news when a couple of prominent politicians play nice says a lot about the state of politics. Read more →
It’s been a little more than 70 years Major Don Beerbower, an ace pilot, was shot down and died in Saint-Thierry. But today, the town will dedicate a monument to the 22-year-old from Hill City, MN., who might’ve had a big career in buttermaking (he was studying it in Iowa State) had the war not broken out when it did. Read more →
Driving out of downtown Saint Paul last evening, I was particularly struck by the number of people who ignored the ‘don’t walk’ signal and strutted into the crosswalk, defying the cars to hit them. It’s been going on for years, of course. Read more →
If we ever needed a reminder about the value of a newspaper, we need only look at the reporting in the last few week of Brandon Stahl of the Star Tribune, who uncovered a combination of apparent incompetence and faulty legislation in the state’s child abuse reporting system that left Eric Dean, 4, dead. Read more →
Vivian Boyack, 91, and Alice Dubes, 90, got married on Saturday. Read more →
First, we acknowledge that (a) playing the lottery is a good way to throw your money away and (b) publicizing winners helps keep people ignoring “a”. That said, who among us hasn’t thought of what we’d do with the sudden addition of millions into the bank account? Today, Rhonda Meath, 51, told reporters that she Read more →
A 12-year old girl is isolated from her classmates because she’s a piano prodigy. Read more →