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NewsCut

MPR News Reflections and observations on the news

By Bob Collins

Bob Collins
bcollins@mpr.org • @newscut

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.

Politics

A journalist destroys his TV station’s credibility

Bob CollinsBob Collins October 6, 2018, 3:53 PM Oct 6, 2018
69

KTTC, the Rochester TV station, has some explaining to do if it wants to restore the credibility it lost when a news anchor wore a Make America Great Again hat during a live shot at President Trump’s appearance in Rochester.
Read more →

People doing good

A squirrel, a cop and a good Samaritan: tales from Brooklyn Park

Bob CollinsBob Collins October 5, 2018, 7:11 AM Oct 5, 2018
32

Watch enough episodes of “Cops” and you learn that when an officer walks up to a guy who’s out of his car and by the curb, it almost never ends well. This time it did.
Read more →

What’s on MPR News – 10/5/18

Bob CollinsBob Collins October 5, 2018, 6:00 AM Oct 5, 2018
5

Here are the stories, topics, and guests you’ll hear today on MPR News. Read more →

This or That

Juan Romero, RFK’s final handshake, dead

Bob CollinsBob Collins October 4, 2018, 3:51 PM Oct 4, 2018

It was only recently that Juan Romero finally began to let go of the memories from a night in June 1968.

It was only recently that he began to celebrate his birthday again, because it fell on the same month as the time he got to see Robert F. Kennedy close up. Read more →

Politics

1,000 Words: The media goes to a political rally

Bob CollinsBob Collins October 4, 2018, 3:27 PM Oct 4, 2018
17

Let’s check in on how the media is faring at the big Trump rally in Rochester. Read more →

Arts & Culture

8-year-old skipping stones finds a 1,500-year-old Viking sword

Bob CollinsBob Collins October 4, 2018, 1:09 PM Oct 4, 2018
19

Saga Vanecek, 8, who used to call Minneapolis home, had your typical day in Sweden one day over the summer. She went to the lake, took a dip, started throwing stones to see how far they’d skip, then pulled a 1,000-year-old sword with apparent Viking ancestry out of the lake. Read more →

This or That

A death in the family, a wrong number, and the meeting of two cultures

Bob CollinsBob Collins October 4, 2018, 12:40 PM Oct 4, 2018
3

Leena Ali had never heard of people celebrating a life after death, only sad funerals, apparently. Then she got a text to attend a celebration for someone she didn’t know. Read more →

Arts & Culture · The jobs we do

There’s money in moose turds

Bob CollinsBob Collins October 4, 2018, 9:36 AM Oct 4, 2018
10

Mary Winchenbach gets excited when she sees ‘a moose take a turd.’ Who doesn’t, Mary? Read more →

Crime and Justice

Minn. deputy demoted after racist tweets sues to get his job back

Bob CollinsBob Collins October 4, 2018, 8:50 AM Oct 4, 2018

“It’ll probably be gone in six months on crack cocaine,” Rice County deputy Tom McBroom tweeted after hearing that the woman who was with Philando Castile, the man shot to death by a St. Anthony police officer, received an $800,000 settlement. Read more →

Economy

To be down and out in Detroit Lakes

Bob CollinsBob Collins October 4, 2018, 7:10 AM Oct 4, 2018

Jeremy Scott and Lori Rogers had nothing but their dog under the Highway 10 overpass. They’d been left nearby by ‘fellow travelers’ and were trying to figure out a way to get out of the cold before winter sets in. Time is running out. Read more →

What’s on MPR News – 10/4/18

Bob CollinsBob Collins October 4, 2018, 6:00 AM Oct 4, 2018
1

Here are the stories, topics, and guests you’ll hear today on MPR News. Read more →

Weather

Stranded in snowstorm, a trumpeter keeps spirits up

Bob CollinsBob Collins October 3, 2018, 3:23 PM Oct 3, 2018
5

Alberta got hammered by an early-season snowstorm. Calgary is paralyzed. For over 10 hours, people were huddled in vehicles stuck in ditches and on Highway 1, impassable because of the snow.

Professional trumpeter Jens Lindemann did what he could to pass the time . Read more →

Crime and Justice

The wisdom of innocent men set free

Bob CollinsBob Collins October 3, 2018, 2:01 PM Oct 3, 2018
5

John Nolley Jr. walked out of a courtroom in Texas today with his good name restored. Read more →

This or That

Cougar or dog?

Bob CollinsBob Collins October 3, 2018, 1:00 PM Oct 3, 2018
7

Not since the blue dress debate of 2015 has social media been so torn — and America been momentarily distracted from reality — by a question: is it a cougar or a dog? Read more →

People doing good

Doc performs rare boy/stuffed bear surgery

Bob CollinsBob Collins October 3, 2018, 12:33 PM Oct 3, 2018
6

Jackson McKie, 8, of Prince Edward Island, was having some surgery last week to replace a shunt as part of his treatment for hydrocephalus. So he had his stuffed animal along because you know how 8-year-olds are about having an operation, right?
Read more →

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