Blog

Precision Agriculture

Computer terminals filled with markets data, agricultural news, and weather forecasts, GPS-led unmanned tractors – high technologies that have been adopted by American farmers to do their business and enhance their operations. Minnesota is one of the leading...
A dangerous game

A dangerous game

The translucent green of the double-volume Journalists Memorial Gallery at the Newseum, lends it a serene air that belies its darker nature. It is, when one stops to think about it, a sombre sight to behold: the names of thousands of journalists who’ve died in the...

Traditionally Inward

This is my second visit to the United States and very interesting experiences in terms of my interaction with the local people. It has always been a great to talk to the American people as they are very welcoming and emphatic listeners at the same time. Though...
Diabetes deep fried on a stick

Diabetes deep fried on a stick

In one of the early books of the series Little House on the Prairie, On the Banks of Plum Creek, Laura’s father Charles Ingalls travels hundreds of miles away to find work after grasshoppers destroyed their crops. It’s around Christmas and on the way back he...
Why US public toilets remind me of the NSA

Why US public toilets remind me of the NSA

It doesn’t happen very often that I feel a little culture shock in the US. The American culture reaches me on a daily basis in the Netherlands through music, movies, TV-series and literature. But there is one place that makes me uncomfortable every time I visit the...

Changing tastes and expanding waists

The United States is the fattest country in the world. It is also one of the wealthiest. Those two pieces of trivia are not unrelated. In fact, there’s a noted correlation between bulging pay cheques and burgeoning body mass. The World Health Organisation (WHO) notes...

The danger of a single narrative

Couple of weeks ago, up in Ely, I was sitting up late at night talking to my co-host Sharon Staat. Sharon lives in Chicago but visits Anne Swenson up in Ely twice a year – they’ve been friends for over 50 years! The details of our conversation escape me, but I...

Judge Tunheim

  Interview in Pressa daily (national bulgarian newspaper) with John Tunheim, district judge for Minnesota. From 1994-1998 he was appointed by president Clinton to serve as a chair of the U.S. Assassination Records Review Board in charge of declassifying...
Media as charity

Media as charity

“You won’t find the name Kardashian on our website,” MinnPost’s executive editor Andrew Putz said. We were sitting in a circle in a Minneapolis warehouse where MinnPost, an online news outlet for the Minnesota area, has its offices. MinnPost is a non-profit media...

The value of editorial independence

Piles of papers stacked at the edge of desks. Cups of coffee that were left behind due to the rush. Phones ringing and old headlines highlighted with red marker hanging in the walls. Visiting the editorial newsroom of the Star Tribune on August 14, along with the 2014...