Bob Collins
Interviewer Dick Gordon is calling it quits as host of American Public Media’s The Story. 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.
People don’t really love their dogs more than humanity, it’s not the heat; it’s the fire, the FAA grounds journalists, when Hollywood is real, and why are there shoes on power lines? Read more →
Linda Ronstadt has revealed that she can no longer sing a note; she has Parkinson’s. She ushered in a pretty fair era in music in the late ’60s and early’70s, along with James Taylor, Carole King, and the Eagles: folk rock. She was the decade’s highest-paid female singer and it wasn’t because of the high-glitz Read more →
Honored guests surprised MPR’s Cathy Wurzer at the State Fair. Read more →
Not much news but lots of good at the State Fair. Read more →
The well-heeled neighborhoods of Saint Paul lead in recycling; the working-class neighborhoods are at the bottom of the heap Read more →
Wired.com has noticed that Best Buy’s stock has tripled so far in 2013, suggesting that it’s back from its near-death experience. Read more →
Workers too loyal? Nursing home tasers and the young face of a civil war. Read more →
The Woodbury rain gardens are a success, sort of. Read more →
In some old vinyl, a bit of family history is discovered. Read more →
The ‘user fee’ to get an education, predicting suicide, Indian foster care controversy in South Dakota expands, a Shaina Briscoe update, and Ben Garvin’s magic beard. Read more →
Unless something changes, 2013 in the Twin Cities may be the summer when people and politicians gave up and ceded their neighborhoods to the gangs. Just last week, for example, a beating on the East Side of Saint Paul led its residents to beg for officials to do something — anything, really. Nobody seems to Read more →
Who shoots people “just for fun?” Plus: Should Wisconsin raise the speed limit? Guns at the Minnesota Capitol. Aid to Egypt. Big bucks from cigarette taxes. Read more →
The plug was pulled on Al Gore’s Current TV this afternoon and the Al Jazeera America era is underway. Qatar-based Al Jazeera paid $500 million to buy Current TV. “Some people ask, ‘Is it jihad journalism?’ It’s hard to have a dignified conversation about that,” Paul Beban, the Denver correspondent, tells the Denver Post. Read more →
There’s always someone to tell you you can’t do something. There are people who will listen to them. And people who won’t. Pete Gustin reads copy for a living, even though he’s legally blind. He just put a video together explaining how he does it.