Greetings from Kearney, the morning after I attended the annual Nebraska Community Foundation celebration that hops around the state each year. It’s always so darn inspiring to hear about the good work happening in some Nebraska small towns … stories like this one and this one and many more have spun directly or indirectly out of conversations we have had with the small-town leaders gathered here. Note to our reporters: I got a couple more great ideas last night!
(The sound you hear is FFP reporters with full story lists groaning in unison.)
Book wars: A fight over library books in Plattsmouth triggered the resignation of the school librarian and two recall attempts of the school board member advocating the removal of 49 books. Those books, instead of being on school library shelves, now sit in a box in the principal’s office.
In today’s story, FFP’s Rural Nebraska Fellow Evelyn Mejia shows Plattsmouth is far from alone. In the seven libraries she surveyed, 127 books have been challenged in the past 22 months. It mirrors a national trend pitting parental rights against fears of censorship. A look at the 127 books challenged also shows that books with gay and lesbian characters or wider LGBTQ themes are often on the challenged list.
This one-time Red Cloud teenager had his mind blown and discovered wider worlds thanks to authors in our school library, writers like Morrison, Orwell, Vonnegut and others who sometimes wrote edgy, violent, disturbing and incredible things. (Vonnegut, especially, often shows up on book challenge lists.) To me that library was a safe place. It was a place where, without really knowing it, I was becoming a writer. It was a place where I could become me. I pray that Nebraskans who disagree on much else, and even disagree on individual books they think their children should or shouldn’t read, can find common ground on preserving the importance, the power, of that safety.
Overloaded: In Douglas and Sarpy counties, caseworkers tasked with the difficult job of helping families navigate the complicated, emotionally charged foster care system are carrying massive and unlawful caseloads.
That’s not just according to FFP’s story this week, written by Omaha investigative reporter Chris Bowling. That’s according to the state’s own law.
The story finds that, by some metrics, things are getting a little better following the debacle that was Saint Francis Ministries’ case management in the Omaha area. But by other metrics, things are still pretty darn crummy in our foster care system, a reality experts fear is harming birth parents, foster parents and children alike.
Lovely failure: I was so struck this week by a short essay written by Kellee Mikuls in our sister publication Silicon Prairie News. I’m not the target audience for this essay — I don’t know much about the startup community, for starters — but I was moved by it anyway. I’m still thinking about it a few days after reading it.
I wanted to share it with you because I think it’s a rare look at failure, at the exact moment of that failure — a moment that we tend to hide from one another and the outside world. It’s raw. Honest. Important. Thanks to SPN Editor Stefanie Monge for publishing it. And thank you, Kellee, for having the courage to write it.
Next week: Get excited, Nebraskans. Next week we begin publishing our series on land, titled “Who’s Buying Nebraska?” I’m already excited for you to read it.
Questions wanted: Some of our best story ideas come from readers, and they typically start with a burning question that just cries out for an answer. Have a question that our reporters need to look into? Complete this form or reach our newsroom at [email protected].
Sincerely,
—Matthew Hansen, Executive Editor
Here’s what we’re into this week: News from around Nebraska
Every week we like to share great Nebraska journalism, no matter who made it. Here’s what caught our eye this week:
- Two newspapers in two states are focusing on Boys Town, the storied Omaha-based charity.
The Des Moines Register has published an explosive seven-part series, written by investigative reporter Lee Rood. Among its findings: There have been at least 12 rapes, six aggravated assaults and 111 other assaults reported by Boys Town’s village police department in the past five years. But leaders are refusing to release any info about those assaults to the press or public — and may not have reported them to state agencies, those agencies say, as required by law.
With the Register’s permission, we republished their summary of the investigation’s findings on Thursday. You can read it here. - The Omaha World-Herald’s investigative reporter Henry Cordes with a story about Boys Town’s giant endowment, and more on the unusual financial arrangement that leaders used to grow it.
- Here’s a worlds colliding moment. Philip Meyer, the father of data journalism, died this week. Data journalism is the underpinning of much of the best work done by our stellar FFP reporters. And Philip Meyer, as it turns out, is from Deshler!
Deshler, home of the Dragons, upset Red Cloud High School and superstar junior guard Matthew Hansen in the 1997 district finals to advance to the state basketball tournament. I suppose it’s time I forgave Deshler. - Nebraska native and friend of FFP Dionne Searcey continues to co-author a crucial series on the groundwater that’s fast disappearing in large swaths of the United States.
- ProPublica has a new story on the Oracle of Omaha, who records show may have been violating Berkshire Hathaway’s own policy on personal stock trading.
- Nebraska Rep. Mike Flood is interviewed in this fascinating story about potential political solutions to a growing public health dilemma in the United States — loneliness.
Said fascinating story is by Politico reporter and official Friend of FFP Erin Schumaker, who reports that she carries her Flatwater Free Press tote bag around Brooklyn. - And finally: Remember that raid on a small-town Kansas newspaper? Turns out that Kansas officials knew just a little bit more about that than they previously admitted. Story from States Newsroom, the parent org of the Nebraska Examiner.
