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.
Justin Taylor Dentz, 38, of Blaine, admitted in court that he solicited sex with someone on Backpage.com and agreed to pay $120 for time to the person who said she was 15.
She was a cop conducting an undercover prostitution sting in Maple Grove. Read more →
John McCain left behind a message. Read more →
Some products practically sell themselves and Barry Coleman, of Winona, Minn., has got a killer idea.
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Slowly, NPR is shedding its snooty image of old aristocrats and allowing more voices on the air — regular, varied voices — that would have never made it to air a couple of decades ago, not without a carton of heaters first.
It’s a good thing. They come with unimaginable expertise and intelligence. Read more →
There’s nothing particularly surprising about President Donald Trump’s rejection of a White House statement praising the late Sen. John McCain on Saturday. What’s surprising is people expected something different. Read more →
Here are the stories, topics, and guests you’ll hear today on MPR News. Read more →
A nagging disappointment for me at the death of Sen. John McCain is I barely remember the only encounter I had with him. It was 1980 or so; I was a 24-year old reporter for a great little radio station in a competitive small market who scored some time with him at a Republican fundraiser in the Berkshires of Massachusetts. Read more →
Brittany Lawrence has probably heard your complaints that the only thing on social media are pictures of people showing what they’re eating. That’s wrong. There are pictures of budding Internet sensations: in this case, Wanda Petersen, 86, showing what she’s eating. Read more →
The way the economy of agriculture is now, a sure sign that you’re going to have a tough time in the dairy business is you have a name for all of your cows.
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We want to feel good about feel-good stories, but sometimes they leave a bad taste.
Today’s exhibit: The story of Johnny Bobbitt, the homeless man — and Marine veteran — in Philadelphia who last November gave a woman the last $20 he had, so she could buy gas for her stalled car. Read more →
Linda Kwong tried to take her own life in 2012, but she lived to talk about it publicly, something that almost never happens; we’re not that advanced yet in our willingness to talk about such things. Read more →
Mr. Bendo has been standing outside a muffler shop in Sioux Falls for years. The people of Sioux Falls have grown to like the guy who’s been standing over them since 1963. Read more →
Steve Hiniker, of Madison, Wis., lost his wallet. Last May he stopped in to buy some power bars while bicycling in the Czech Republic. He accidentally left it in a small store in Litomerice, about 40 miles from Prague Read more →
Here are the stories, topics, and guests you’ll hear today on MPR News. Read more →
The pilot of a vintage military airplane that crashed today at Anoka Blaine Airport reported his plane was apparently on fire just before it crashed at the end of a runway. Read more →
Bob Collins