A Nebraska doctor and author was just starting to write a history of pandemics in early 2020 when… well, you know what happened next.
Our Flatwater Free Press freelance feature story this week is a first-person essay from Dr. Lydia Kang. Kang, a Nebraska Medicine primary care doc, found herself living through our newest global pandemic, caring for and occasionally losing patients to COVID-19, and facing fresh anti-Asian bigotry even as she continued to write about the most infamous pandemics from our past.
It’s a story about history repeating itself. It’s a story about how to keep writing, how to keep surviving, even as a pandemic rages and bigotry rears its ugly head. Read Dr. Kang’s story here.
Dr. Lydia Kang of Omaha.
An important, well-told Flatwater Free Press story goes national
Last week, we released Chris Bowling’s excellent story for Flatwater Free Press about a Lakota family in Kilgore, Nebraska, who has filed a lawsuit against the local school district after a school employee snipped two daughters’ hair. The story explained the history, the belief system, and the gap in cultural understanding that led the family and the school to this point.
Here is what has happened since.
The story ran in the Lincoln Journal Star, the Scottsbluff Star-Herald, and almost every daily newspaper in the state. It ran on Nebraska Public Media, the statewide National Public Radio affiliate. It ran on Indianz.com, Nebraska’s premier Native American media outlet, and in Indian Country Today, the nation’s premier Native American media outlet.
And then it ran in USA Today, where, in a single day, it was read by a half-million Americans.
We are overjoyed to say that, three weeks into publication, we were able to publish and distribute an important, well-told story from Kilgore, population 63, to more than a million people across the nation. If you haven’t yet read it, you can find it here.
What we’re into this week: News from around Nebraska
- Friend of the FFP newsletter Aaron Sanderford at KMTV 3 News Now reported a smart and important story: A gargantuan number of Nebraska overdose deaths are from fentanyl. So why do dealers of that drug face more lenient penalties?
- Nebraska Public Media, the statewide National Public Radio affiliate, continues to do good work, alongside several of the state’s newspapers, on following the overcrowded and understaffed conditions in our state’s prison system. Here, reporter Bill Kelly describes prison guards and other staff facing violence, and fearing more.
One last thing: Remember that these stories are your stories, and the Flatwater Free Press could always use your help. Do you know of a story that needs to be told? Send us your news tips using this form or via [email protected].
Thank you for following along.
—Matthew Hansen, Executive Editor
