Bob Collins
Winter just got colder and duller for the St. Croix Valley.
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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.
Garrison Keillor has gotten some people stirred up again, thanks to his assessment of the election of 2018 and, specifically, the election of the first Somali-American from Minnesota to Congress. Read more →
Arlighty, then, let’s check how the skilled Minnesota drivers did on the road this morning to prove their mettle.
Urp. Read more →
Bill James, the onetime security guard who literally changed the game of baseball by developing new statistics to measure performance, is in big trouble with players for suggesting the boys aren’t as important as they think they are.
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‘I thought you guys were supposed to be good at this winter stuff,’ an out-of-towner said to me late Thursday night when I dropped him off at a hotel on the Bloomington strip. It had taken us about 45 minutes to drive from Fairview Hospital, taking the deserted river roads instead of returning to the disaster on the interstate I’d been seeing all evening. Read more →
Here are the stories, topics, and guests you’ll hear today on MPR News. Read more →
There is a growing political caucus in America: people in office whose children have been killed in gun violence. Read more →
Peter DeMarco said he wants to know every step the hospital has taken and also wants it shared with every other hospital in the country so that what happened to his wife won’t happen to anyone else. Read more →
Bob Naegele never seemed to get the credit he deserved in the state of hockey. He brought the National Hockey League back to Minnesota, a distinction that politicians hijacked back in the ’90s, a few years after Norm Green spirited the North Stars to Dallas. Read more →
Who’s a good dog? Who’s a good dog? Milo the pit bull is a good dog. Oh, yes he is. Read more →
I turned my ballot over the other day and had the same immediate thought I’ve had in every election since I moved to a state that elects judges: ‘this is a charade.’ Read more →
Just when you think all is lost, a couple of political opponents wrap up their campaigns against each other over drinks and prove that class and graciousness are not entirely extinct. Read more →
Here are the stories, topics, and guests you’ll hear today on MPR News. Read more →
This picture, owned by the Washington Post, carries with it a story of humanity that could, perhaps in a different universe, transcend politics. Read more →
Journalists and presidents have sparred for far longer than many of us have been alive, but for a few old-timers who still remember the Nixon administration, it was hard not to take a trip down memory lane to see how the things have changed in the category of ‘shocking’ at presidential news conferences. Read more →