According to yours truly, there are only a few things you need to do to earn your Official Nebraskan card.
One of those things: You gotta go see the sandhill cranes.
I’m an odd messenger for this argument, as I’m generally disinterested in outdoor activities that don’t involve a Cubs game or a golf course. I’m probably the worst outdoorsman ever to hail from Webster County, Nebraska — so bad, in fact, that I actively sought out a different job in high school after working (ineptly) for years as a farmhand on our family farm.
That job: Mortician’s Assistant. I really did enjoy the dearly departed more than I did farm work.
But I digress. Take it from this indoor cat who enjoys air conditioning: Get yourself in a central Nebraska blind to see the sandhill cranes. Go see them because the power of hundreds of thousands of majestic birds rising from the river at sunrise simply can’t be replicated by anything you can find on Netflix. Go see them because it’s an oh-so-Nebraska thing to do.
This week, our central Nebraska correspondent extraordinaire Lori Potter has two stories on our awe-inspiring avian friends. She reports on the big business of crane watching, a central Nebraska cottage industry that has been devastated by floods, mud and then a global pandemic. Like so many of us, the organizations and businesses that rely on crane tourists are hoping for a return to something resembling normal this spring.
And Lori also has an oddly inspiring story that involves cranes, power lines, UV light… and a new way to protect sandhill cranes from the manmade dangers of the modern world.
Randy Essex has an agile mind. His editor’s brain is constantly churning new story ideas, new angles, new ways to go deeper into an important issue facing this state or country. Randy has sharp elbows. And he has a reporter’s soul. Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t possibly hide his deep and abiding love for this thing called journalism.
We need all the Randy Essexes we can get in 2022, which is one of the reasons it was so disheartening to hear a few weeks ago that he had been laid off as executive editor of the Omaha World-Herald.
We can’t change the brutal modern-day realities of corporate journalism. But we could run his latest column. The one scheduled to publish on Feb. 17, except he was laid off on Feb. 16.
We published it Tuesday. Here it is.
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:
- All of the drawbacks of homeownership — big bills, repair costs and more — with none of the benefits. That’s the Cliff’s Notes version of the so-called contract for deed system, a kind of rent to own process for houses that results in many wannabe homeowners putting themselves further behind the eight ball. Nebraska Public Media looks into the practice.
- The evolution of the Nebraska Environmental Trust has raised more than a few eyebrows. It’s gone from funding recycling to ethanol after an overhaul of the governor-appointed board. Reporter extraordinaire Paul Hammel takes a look into just what’s changed, and the real impact it’s having on operations and employers throughout the state of Nebraska.
- Several tribes are asking the state to address some municipal water systems that have become “dangerously substandard,” News Channel Nebraska’s Joe Jordan reports.
