Flatwater Free Press celebrates five years as Nebraska’s first statewide nonprofit newsroom

Down winding dirt and gravel roads just minutes south of Lincoln, hundreds of people packed into Roca Berry Farm’s Creekside Barn last week to celebrate five years of Nebraska’s first statewide nonprofit newsroom: The Flatwater Free Press. 

There, guests drifted through the open barn doors, drinks and food in hand, and spoke with Flatwater reporters about their recent work. 

As the autumn sun set, Tyler Free-LaMere, a nationally recognized Winnebago composer whom Flatwater spotlighted earlier this year, kicked off the evening’s formal programming with a song.

This year’s Flatwater Festival was the last of five events celebrating the newsroom’s fifth anniversary. During the event, several speakers discussed Flatwater’s journey and the importance of journalism, including keynote speaker George Packer, an Atlantic journalist and award-winning author.

Founders Matt Wynn and Matthew Hansen spoke first, explaining Flatwater’s origins and the milestones the paper has surpassed over the last five years. 

It began, they said, as a vision for what nonprofit journalism could be in Nebraska: investigative reporting and stories that bind the state together, from Omaha to Ogallala.

“We wanted to help make (Nebraska) better,” said Hansen, Flatwater’s editor, “and we also wanted to reflect what was good about the place.”

Flatwater’s first office was a windowless janitor’s closet, said Wynn, executive director of the Nebraska Journalism Trust, the organization that oversees Flatwater. From there, he said, it has steadily grown to include over 25 reporters, editors and administrative staff. 

And with the addition of a central Nebraska reporter earlier this year, Flatwater now has journalists based in Omaha, Lincoln and Kearney. 

“We’re starting to get that mix that you really want to see in the newsroom of institutional knowledge and young talent, and it’s from all over the country,” Hansen said. “We hear so much in Nebraska about brain drain … Flatwater Free Press is brain gain.”

This year, Flatwater partnered with both ProPublica and the New York Times to do stories on Omaha’s lead cleanup problems and the hog operations run by Gov. Jim Pillen’s family. 

Yanqi Xu, a senior reporter at Flatwater, told guests about her reporting on Pillen Family Farms, including an investigation into the death of 17-year-old Zach Panther in a building at Beaver Valley Pork in St. Edward and the more recent investigation that found Pillen Family Farms employs undocumented workers. 

In her reporting, Xu said she talked to more than 100 people. She said the reporting process is “transparent,” requiring careful relationship-building and people willing to share their stories.

“(There’s) no secret sauce, but it’s just hard work,” Xu said. “And I think that’s what we’re here to do.”

To close the evening, Packer, a two-time Pulitzer finalist and author of 10 books, spoke with Hansen about his writing journey and the power of reporting.

In 2003, Packer began his journalism career as a staff writer for The New Yorker and transitioned to The Atlantic in 2018, where he has been since. He writes about American politics, culture and foreign policy.

Packer said he never thought he’d end up in journalism. But when he began writing long-form journalism in his 40s, he said, his past successes and failures as an author prepared him to excel in the sister career. 

“Journalism should be both a craft and an art,” Packer said. “You should aspire as a journalist to write as well as any novelist does.”

Packer emphasized the importance of newspapers and nonprofit journalism, especially now, in what he described as a “second Gilded Age,” with robber barons, labor strife, great technological change and immigration conflicts reminiscent of a century ago.

He said small-town newspapers ended the first Gilded Age by keeping the powerful in check.

“We report it through journalism,” Packer said. “It’s the sort of necessary condition for democracy to function, for people to feel as if they have a voice. So, I think what you’re doing is, I have to say, historically important for America.”

Packer’s latest book, “The Emergency,” a dystopian novel about a society that collapsed from boredom and loss of faith, was given to guests at the end of the night.

The other anniversary events, all free of charge, included a merch pop-up, a screening of the documentary “Storm Lake” at Omaha’s Dundee Theater, a Nebraska trivia night hosted by Flatwater reporters and a Flatwater forum that included Atlantic editor and former Nebraskan Jenna Johnson. The event, which also included discussions about Nebraska journalism and civic engagement, was held at Morrill Hall on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln campus. 

The goal of Flatwater, Wynn said, is not to replace daily newspapers, but to write in-depth stories that go beyond basic information. 

And with the help of Nebraska readers, donors and journalists, Wynn and Hansen said they have been able to do just that. 

“It was Nebraskans supporting it first,” Hansen said. “… There’s no statewide nonprofit newsroom (in America) aside from Flatwater Free Press that does investigative journalism and also stories that bind the state together.”