Bob Collins
When’s the last time you used cursive writing? 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.
Sen. Al Franken has tried mightily to get the nation — and the nation’s politicians — alarmed about the demise of net neutrality. For the most part, it’s fallen on deaf ears because the nation doesn’t really get technology and the politicians do get telecommunications money to influence public policy.
The public has been nothing but sleepy in response. Read more →
A report on climate change suggests that the Upper Midwest stands to benefit. For now. Read more →
More evidence that among the great injustices on the planet is that dogs don’t live longer. In Cooperstown, North Dakota — about 100 miles northwest of Fargo — a three-year-old boy was found safe early this morning after disappearing six hours earlier from his farm. Bloodhounds, people on foot, and an airplane were brought in Read more →
Most journalists are not Republicans but they’re not Democrats, either. Read more →
Here it is, your moment of Minnesota Zen. Read more →
You have to love a town that loves its library. Read more →
Maybe if we started ignoring the big-name speakers that universities pay to speak at commencements, the schools would start providing speakers who actually have a message to give to students setting out to make their mark on the world, and who aren’t making a buck to deliver it.
Instead, these choices are often part of the school’s marketing scheme. Pay some money, get a big name, get some free advertising in the form of news coverage.
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This time of the year can be difficult for those of us with educational self-esteem problems.
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Airline service to Chicago returns tomorrow to St. Cloud. The initial fares are more than competitive with the Twin Cities. Read more →
Today’s dispatch from the ‘Department of What Were They Thinking.’ Eighth grade students in Rialto, California were given an assignment to debate whether the Holocaust really happened. Read more →
In an op-ed in today’s Star Tribune Daniel Wolpert of Minneapolis defends the practice of judging the parents in news stories where a child has done wrong.
Clearly, Wolpert is talking mostly about the parents of John LaDue of Waseca. He’s the 17-year-old boy charged with a plot to set off bombs at schools in Waseca, then shoot kids trying to flee. Reportedly, he planned to kick off his day by killing his parents. Read more →
Is going to college still worth the cost? Yes. Next question. Read more →
The next time someone dismisses Twitter as just a place where you post about what you’re having for lunch, tell them the story of Torri Biddle, 19, an Ohio woman who was born without an arm. Read more →
Is it time to turn the page on the University of Iowa’s infamous pink visitors’ locker room at Kinnick Stadium?
Famed coach Hayden Fry had the locker room painted pink in 1979, and the university added pink urinals in a renovation in 2005. Read more →