Flatwater Free PressMatthew Hansen is the editor of the Flatwater Free Press. Hansen spent 16 years at Nebraska newspapers, as a reporter at the Lincoln Journal Star and then a reporter and metro columnist at the Omaha World-Herald. The native of Red Cloud and one-time intern at the Red Cloud Chief and the Hastings Tribune now lives in Omaha and is married to Sarah Baker-Hansen, a longtime Nebraska food writer and restaurant critic.
Pretend for a moment that Nebraska somehow halted all use of nitrogen fertilizer – not a single speck more on our lawns, golf courses and corn fields. What…
WALTHILL-The children of the Omaha Reservation begin descending on the town park in late afternoon. They arrive unannounced in twos and threes on a recent Monday, cluster in…
Earnest Jackson is innocent and should be released from prison, say two family members of the man he’s convicted of murdering. Their public support of Jackson is the…
He sits solitary on the front porch of the most famous literary home in Nebraska, bundled in a purple ski jacket to endure the too-cold April morning. The…
If you want to see a small town crackling with energy, drive to Albion and enter the front door of Boone Beginnings. Nearly two dozen infants, toddlers and…
As William Kieler struggled to breathe, as he grew woozy and unresponsive, as they hooked him up to machines to shove air into his lungs, the worried staff…
Forgive George Barnes if he looks a little grim. No one cheesed for the camera in the 19th century. But Barnes’ jaw is clenched and he’s frowning slightly…
Nebraska homesteaders were poor and poorer, Catholic and Protestant, European and American. And almost uniformly white. Except for the homesteaders who settled in a place called Dewitty, near…
Mark Rupp has grown numb to people telling him he’s wrong, yelling that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, when he encourages them to get the COVID-19…
This summer, vaccination in Nebraska has morphed into a public health version of hand-to-hand combat, where medical providers go person-to-person, holding intensely personal conversations and trying to correct rampant vaccine misinformation. In some places, like South Omaha, this is happening widely. And it’s working.