Bob Collins
Small stories in a big disaster, Wisconsin’s controversy that won’t die, living on a welfare card, preparing for floods, and should football be eliminated from high school.
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.
The terrible situation with Japan’s nuclear installations affords old-timers the opportunity to remember when it was a U.S. nuclear plant that was melting down. It was 1979, when the Three Mile Island plant, on the Susquehanna River south of Harrisburg Pennsylvania, melted down partially. The U.S. wasn’t really sure how to react; we’d never heard Read more →
Eight people — the crew and several East Coast business executives — were killed when the jet tried to land, aborted the landing, and then crashed into a cornfield.
A Twitter chill, Japan’s meltdowns, why you’re not typical, interview walkouts, and the state of hair.
How many backup plans make a nuke plant safe?
The first announcer, the unsung heroes of journalism, the tsunami video, Minnesota lawmakers want to roll back stateworker bennies, and the editing of the anti-NPR video.
DigitalGlobe, the satellite photography company, has provided about a dozen images on Flickr showing the devastation in Japan.
Saint Paul composer Raymond Berg describes the scene around Tokyo in the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan.
Like the rest of the world, we’re watching the situation with the Japanese nuclear power plant, which exploded overnight. It does not appear at this point that it was a nuclear reaction.
Iowa considers a bill to allow anyone to own a gun without training or background checks.
Kay Crothers, a News Cut reader and an ex-pat Minnesotan, dropped me an e-mail from her home in Crescent City, California a little after lunch today to report that the tsunami had reached her community, and at least one of the waves came in around 9 feet. Her community is just south of the border Read more →