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.
When’s the last time you saw a substantive interview result from a TV reporter knocking on someone’s door? In Detroit, a news crew knocked on the door of an 88-year-old man yesterday, a few days after three people knocked on his door, pushed him inside, knocked him to the ground, put a gun to his Read more →
Derek Jeter will get the extended standing ovation and, with any luck at all, the Minnesota fans will seize the moment and do the Jeter chant. Read more →
Moorhead’s City Council has voted unanimously to oppose housing for the homeless. Read more →
Matthew Guthmiller became the youngest to fly around the world alone but won’t hear much about it: NBC’s Today show has paid the family to be quiet.
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It’s too late for Glenn Burke but Major League Baseball might be taking one tiny, overdue step in acknowledging the gay athlete by inviting his family to the All-Star Game. Read more →
Some time this evening, South Dakota teen Matthew Guthmiller will fulfill his dream and become the youngest person ever to fly around the planet by himself. Read more →
It’s a crime to take selfies while running for your life from the bulls in Pamplona. Read more →
Minnesota’s implied consent law, which allows the state to revoke your driver’s license if you refuse to submit to chemical testing for DUI, has survived yet another constitutional challenge. Read more →
Hello, America, and welcome to Minneapolis-St. Paul! Well, actually, just Minneapolis. Read more →
What do you do after you’ve made your fortune developing games for Playstation and other devices? For John Rowe and his friend, Lale Labuko, retirement involved stopping ritualistic killing of children. Rowe and Labuko are tackling the problem of Mingi in Ethiopia, the belief that a baby is “cursed” if it is born out of Read more →
It was a gorgeous day in Novosibirsk, central Russia, on Saturday when the sky started raining cold death. A freak hailstorm sent people scurrying, including — you may note — the woman in the stars-and-stripes bikini. No one was killed by the hail. Russia Today says snowdrifts piled up on the roads in the Ural Read more →
The Star Tribune’s Phil Miller provides the must-read story of the day (so far) with his profile of Pat Neshek , the Brooklyn Park native who makes his first-ever appearance on the All Star game this week. Read more →
A Target security guard in Leesburg, Va., is out of a job because he reported a shoplifter to the police. The Washington Post says Dallas Northington saw the shoplifter twice on video and says he responded the way he always does; he contacted the Leesburg police. Northington, 29 and a father of two with one Read more →
MPR’s Jay Gabler wrote yesterday about Dylan Spoering, the young Uptown boy who charmed everybody with his plan to hold a piano recital outside his home, the way others might put up a lemonade stand. The friends and neighbors in the area took it from there, whipping up support, creating a Facebook page, and trying Read more →
A 12 year old girl has been charged with a felony for pinching her grandmother. The Argus Leader reports the girl, unidentified of course, is facing a charge of abuse of an elderly woman. The girl’s mother is the one that turned her in after she saw the 75-year old woman, presumably her own mother, Read more →
Bob Collins