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.
Whoever makes the final decision on who will next head NPR has a problem. The media landscape is changing and public radio, in particular, is in no position to think itself isolated from the market forces that are eating away at legacy media. But public radio is also a culture and the people in it don’t like any tinkering with the culture. Read more →
When facts don’t matter in public policy, NPR Morning Edition anchor feels the heat over timid Snowden comments, a ride on the Central Corridor light-rail line, Moorhead woman is repaid for honesty, and the mysterious TV ad from a Sioux Falls lawyer. Read more →
The Vikings break new ground, the U.S. House passes a gun ban, a judge who sentenced a rapist to 30 days in jail tries to keep his job, and a thoughtful conversation on how we relate to our families, spurred by the post earlier today about David Sedaris and the sister who took her own life. Read more →
It is, perhaps, comforting to know that some recent stories depicting the very worst that humans can be, have turned out to be fake.
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The image of David Sedaris, the author and humorist, is taking a significant hit this week as the result of his October New Yorker article about the suicide of his sister. Read more →
If you want to be a hockey star, you can’t be too hung up on little things like family. There are hockey factories, like Shattuck-St. Mary’s. But for the most part, kids have to play junior hockey in small towns across America and have to depend on other families for their families. Grantland today looks Read more →
Unless the U.S. Supreme Court intervenes, you will not be hearing political advertisements on public radio or TV anytime soon.
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Paying until it hurts in the ER, Goodbye to Jason Davis, when the privileged in Minneapolis get a taste of life in other neighborhoods, the bullying experiment, and the brains of hockey ignore the brains of hockey. Read more →
What does a dying comet look like? This. The comet ISON, previously declared dead as it circled the sun, then thought alive when pieces of it appeared to survive, is, in fact, dead, the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics announced today. Its demise was captured by the SOHO spacecraft. Astrophysicist Karl Battams, at the Comet ISON Read more →
When you mail a package, do you have any expectation of privacy about what’s inside? Read more →
The media buy into the National Retail Federation’s holiday hype. Read more →
After an accident, a cafe owner returns; who’s throwing away deer carcasses in Duluth, joy to the world of the dollar, the alcoholic people didn’t know, and Planet Money makes a T-shirt. Read more →
Walmart employees who protest their wages will probably lose their jobs. That seems to be just fine with a lot of people who take these sorts of things personally Read more →
Take heart, Minnesota: There is no law preventing you from wearing a duck on your head. Read more →
The Court said a business owner is not entitled to any more money from Dakota County than he was given when his property was taken by eminent domain, and it did so largely on this question: What is a “community?” Read more →
Bob Collins