Bob Collins
For sure we in the business actively engage in self-delusion when using words to substitute for obscenities. There’s good reason for that. Read more →
MPR News Reflections and observations on the news
Arts & Culture
It seems pretty clear now we’re in a no-school-announcement arms race. Read more →
This is the very definition of a dilemma.
You step off the subway train, your dog in tow, and the door closes, separating you from you and your pup. Read more →
Lost in the Golden Globe Award’s focus of the protest against sexual harassment (which, in turn, was lost in the distraction of whether Oprah Winfrey should run for president) is the real-world’s intrusion into the work of art that won best picture: ‘Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.’ Read more →
Her speech at last night’s Golden Globe Awards, however, was a reminder of the power of language to inspire and lift. No doubt the judgment of it will be based on the usual tribal fighting of the political class and its minions. Read more →
Radio people of a certain age get accustomed to departures. It’s the nature of the business. Long before the “gig economy” became a thing, radio was one giant gig economy. People come, people go, the institution moves on as if they’d never been there at all. Read more →
The battleground for the tribal fighting that’s consuming America is the TV and America’s businesses are increasingly joining the fighting by picking which TV channel they show their waiting customers: Fox, MSNBC, or CNN. Lifetime Fitness wants out of the battle. Read more →
I would have liked to have known Jon Tevlin because he wears his heart on his sleeve and that’s a good thing for a newspaper columnist. It’s also what will get you killed on social media. Read more →
Here’s 36 minutes of a drumline showdown between the kids of Rochester’s Century High School, John Marshall High School, and Mayo High School who spent their night on Wednesday beating drums to raise money for each school’s charity. Read more →
It’s not Christmas until David Sedaris’ Santaland Diaries plays on NPR’s Morning Edition.
Today was that day. For the 25th straight year.
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Bud Minerich, 93, died on Monday. But not before he got to hear from his father, who had left behind a composition that Bud had never heard until this month. Read more →
If you see the words Marilyn Hagerty, you know you’re about to get a quality restaurant review, and the Grand Forks Herald legend did not disappoint with this week’s assessment of the new Chick-fil-A. Read more →
Listeners to a Story Corps episode on NPR about what happened when a man met the imprisoned man who killed his son in a shooting spree on a Western Massachusetts campus apparently noticed the same thing about the episode that I did when I wrote about it the day it aired: There was a lot left out. Read more →
No matter how bad 2017 has been, no matter how many of your heroes have fallen, remember this: We still have Tom Hanks. When he says “nice knobs,” he’s talking typewriters.
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Mary Louise Kelly, who made a name for herself weeks ago with a grilling of her boss in the wake of a sexual misconduct scandal, is the new anchor of NPR’s All Things Considered. Read more →