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.
The brewing crisis on America’s southern border should pretty much kill any chance of immigration reform in the future, the Washington Post reports today. Republican support for any plan that allows undocumented immigrants to stay in the U.S. has plunged since February. Nothing got done in Washington when there was actually support for getting something Read more →
Whenever Minnesota examines its Minnesota Niceness, we are prompted to make popcorn, prop our feet up and watch the unfolding entertainment. We’d invite the neighbors over for the fun but we’ve never met them since they moved in two or three years ago. But that’s a story for another day. The Star Tribune kicked off Read more →
What do you do if you’re a trash hauler with customers who don’t pay their bills? In Red Wing, you give them some trash back. Read more →
It is an ill-kept secret that your NewsCut host wants to catch a baseball (foul or fair; doesn’t matter) at a major league game before he expires on the planet. Like this guy almost did in the upper deck at Target Field during the Home Run Derby the other night. Jordan Jacobson stuck out his Read more →
Most of the publicity around small jets for people has focused on Duluth-based Cirrus, which has put a lot of its future in the hands of the VLJ, the very light jet concept. But at nearly $2 million apiece, that’s not an aircraft for typical people. That’s an aircraft for corporations and businesspeople who don’t Read more →
A new study analyzing reporting of political debates finds that political journalists are more stenographers than journalists, depending on how you view the word “objectivity.” Read more →
It probably didn’t get much notice at last night’s All Star game, except, of course, by the people who were at Target Field. But on Twitter last evening, Eileen Smith posted a pretty poignant moment on the Jumbotron. WWII and Korean War vet on the jumbotron at the #ASG. #mlb #hero @twins usher for 14 Read more →
Fox created the controversy in the first place, then dismissed the controversy as the fault of social media. Read more →
If a homeless person has an apartment, are they still a homeless person? If a person isn’t a homeless person, should a neighborhood still be afraid? These are the questions that aren’t being asked in Moorhead in the unfolding drama surrounding a neighborhood’s attempt to boot out a church-sponsored project to build housing for the Read more →
Who are you and what have you done with Joe Soucheray? The most famous crank in the newspaper business in the Twin Cities and long-time opponent of the Central Corridor light-rail project has seen the light in, perhaps, the biggest turnaround in transit history. In his column in the Pioneer Press today, Soucheray took the Read more →
Lost around here in the spotlight on Minneapolis last night was another case of local kids making good when Trampled by Turtles made its second appearance on the Letterman show. Which, of course, led to a short discussion on taconite.
Don’t you just hate it when your flight is about to land and a whale surfaces on the “runway? (warning: obscenity) It happened late last week in Alaska, of course. (h/t: John Olson)
Comcast is trying significant damage control today after a customer posted audio of his attempt to cancel Comcast’s Internet and cable service in his home. Read more →
Jeremiah Heaton of Abingdon, Virginia, is either a very clever man, a too-indulgent father or — perhaps — a little of both. Read more →
A man has now been charged with shoplifting from a Target store in Virginia, where the security guard who called the cops on him says he was fired for doing so. The Washington Post reports, however, that a Target spokeswoman still won’t talk about the case of Dallas Northington, the Target employee who was fired: Read more →
Bob Collins