Bob Collins
In Fargo, a series of police shootings all seemed to ‘rim out’. Read more →
MPR News Reflections and observations on the news
Archives for May 2015
Ventura, who became a legitimate contender the night he was allowed to debate on the same stage as Republican gubernatorial candidate Norm Coleman and DFL gubernatorial candidate Skip Humphrey. They spoke politician and Ventura decidedly did not. Read more →
The Associated Press stylebook, the bible of newswriting, is announcing several changes and additions this week at a convention of copy editors. Most of them are of little consequence; you can now write BLT on first reference in a news story, for example. But the AP’s directive on suicide is another matter altogether. In its Read more →
The National Spelling Bee preliminary round is being held today, and its officials are confronting the racism that has accompanied it in recent years.
Indian American children have won the spelling bee for seven straight years and 11 of the last 15.
Read more →
When the Red River was flooding in 2009 (and again in 2011), you didn’t hear a lot of complaining about plans to divert the river around the cities on the glacial lake bed — not when every volunteer in the state was racing to Fargo-Moorhead to help sandbag.
Now, it’s getting harder to find someone who likes the idea.
What happened? Read more →
The hatred of pedal pubs, which fueled a squirt-gun attack on a group of off-duty cops last week in Minneapolis, has deliciously reached the ivory towers of academia. Read more →
Four years ago, Chris Norton was paralyzed while playing football at Luther College in Decorah. He was given only a 3 percent chance of ever feeling anything below his waist again, let alone walking.
But he vowed to walk on stage when it came time to get his diploma. Read more →
Drones — quadcopters — are certainly earned their stripes as tools of news gathering and storytelling.
The latest example comes from Houston where Bryan Rumbaugh has posted some pretty amazing footage he took today of the flooding there. Read more →
A kerfuffle in Wisconsin is shedding a bit of a spotlight on this question: “What’s the role of school sports?”
The problem is a bill that includes a provision allowing home-schooled and charter school students to play sports in their public school district. Read more →
Jennifer EhrlichThe PedalPub story could have been sad or tragic or alarming. Thankfully, it’s not. Read more →
The Minnesota Court of Appeals today struck down Minnesota’s defamation law, ruling in the case of a man who published sexually explicit ads on Craigslist after he had a fight with his girlfriend. Read more →
The first U.S. woman in space is honored with today’s Google Doodle, the creator of which provides a pretty neat behind-the-scenes story.
Read more →
We’ve got terrible news for those of you dreaming about setting a world record for most number of bees perched on your body. Read more →
For seven years, Washington County taxpayers have been paying into the regional transportation pool, participating in a systemic buildout of public transportation, assured that although the priority was elsewhere, ‘your time will come.’
It probably won’t, if the Legislature has its way. Read more →
In a blistering op-ed in the New York Times today, a University of Minnesota bioethics professor says the rot that infected an industry-funded anti-psychotic drug study, leading to the suicide of a research subject, extends beyond the department to the administration. Read more →