Bob Collins
Today’s story also appears to illuminate the extent to which some of the nation’s top sportswriters have covered for the NFL. 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 an ad in the competing Star Tribune, the Minnesota Newspaper & Communications Guild said Digital First is seeking an ‘exit strategy’ from the newspaper business. Read more →
A member of the U.S. Air Force was denied re-enlistment last month because he crossed out the words ‘so help me God’ on his papers.
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Buildings would be knocked over from Earl Street on the East side to Dale Street on the west, according to this calculator that’s worth wasting work time playing with today.
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Just a few months after a racist rant forced Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling out of the National Basketball Association, another NBA owner is voluntarily selling his team after an allegedly racist email surfaced. Read more →
Derek Jeter answers a reporter’s cellphone during his news conference. Read more →
For more than a year, Dave and Amy Freeman, of Grand Marais, have been planning a canoe trip to Washington as a way to call attention to — and protest — plans for copper mining in northeast Minnesota which they say threatens the wilderness.
Yesterday, they left.
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Well, here we are. The opening Sunday of football season for the NFL. A chance to follow through on the off-season promises not to support the NFL because you don’t like the owners holding up local taxpayers for a new stadium, or the meager punishment handed out to those players who beat their wives and Read more →
The news today that the owners of Bachman’s Floral Gift & Garden Centers are interested in getting into the medical marijuana business will certainly present a challenge to the company, whose brand isn’t usually associated with pot, even if it’s legal. Read more →
As we suspected, Californians didn’t deserve to get Dunkin’ Donut franchises before Minnesota. Read more →
An aviation mystery playing out today is Cuba’s problem to unravel, at least for a little while yet. The North American Air Defense Command said on its Facebook page that it followed an “unresponsive” business jet until it entered Cuba’s airspace this afternoon. As of 11:30 a.m. EDT today, September 5th, 2014, two F-15 fighter Read more →
Let us now consider this question, thanks to the lonely trash hauler whose trash inexplicably has ended up on I-494 at Excelsior Blvd., at this hour: What’s the worst job in Minnesota?
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In an editor’s note, The Economist acknowledged a slavery-sympathetic bood review shouldn’t have been posted. It also reposted the review ‘in the interest of transparency.’ Read more →
Today’s installment of “why can’t things be the way they were back in the day” comes from NPR, where Juan Vidal asks a good question: Where’s the poetry? In generations past, poets have fought brutality and injustice with the power of the word. There’s still a lot of poetry out there, but it’s not being Read more →
U of M climatologist Mark Seeley reported on his Facebook page this week that there were only two days of 90-degree highs in the Twin Cities this summer. In other parts of the state — Rochester, Morris, Albert Lea and Duluth, for example — there weren’t any. This, we’re told, has only happened eight other Read more →