Bob Collins There was a pretty good chance that nobody would show up for Joseph Walker’s funeral today, or even know that he was dead.
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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.
Fewer firms increased capital spending compared to the October survey responses, but the cutback appeared to be concentrated more in structures than in information and communication technology investments, according to a press release accompanying the survey, which also showed that while most respondents don’t see a recession within the next year, they also don’t see much business growth. Read more →
The Minnesota Court of Appeals Monday broadened state law on what constitutes criminal sexual conduct beyond actual sex in the case of a man caught arrested after online conversations with a police decoy posing as a 14-year-old boy. Read more →
For the past few hours, it’s painful watching what’s become of Tom Brokaw, the once esteemed NBC News anchor who got into an online mess when he suggested Hispanics have an assimilation problem. Read more →
Already this morning, my Twitter feed is full of people worried that school be closed tomorrow, and that school won’t be closed tomorrow.
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Here are the stories, topics, and guests you’ll hear today on MPR News. Read more →
There are guns in yearbook stories and then there are guns in yearbooks stories. They’re not all created equal and the Blackduck, Minn., School Committee seemed to recognize that when it voted to allow Antonia Long’s photo to appear in the yearbook. She’s holding a gun. Read more →
Star Tribune sports columnist Jim Souhan has had it up to here with what baseball writers have had to endure when submitting their votes for the Baseball Hall of Fame. Read more →
Any school bus driver will tell you this sort of thing happens all the time, it just happened to be in Dunn County, Wisc., (the Menomonie area) where someone with a dashcam caught the near horrifying moment when a driver couldn’t be bothered stopping for a school bus. Read more →
When it comes to obnoxious fans, only concert-goers can rival golf fans who insist on shouting ‘get in the hole!’ at the tee box of a par five hole.
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Here are the stories, topics, and guests you’ll hear today on MPR News. Read more →
January has a habit of showing up around this time of year, and so does this post. Read more →
Casey Smitherman, a school superintendent in Elwood, Ind., has been arrested for a crime committed by the nation’s health care system. Read more →
Earlier this week, there was appropriate gnashing of teeth with word that Digital First — the hedge fund that’s destroyed the St. Paul Pioneer Press and other proud newspapers across America — would make a play for Gannett, owners of dozens of newspapers, including the St. Cloud Times, the Sioux Falls Argus Leader, and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
We need not have worried about Digital First. Gannett has killed off many of the papers with a round of layoffs that leaves the newspapers as newspapers in name only. Read more →
Abdellatif El Maarouf blew through stop signals and slammed his westbound Green Line train into a car crossing the intersection at Eustis and University, killing the driver and badly injuring a passenger. Read more →