We weren’t going to send a newsletter this short holiday week. And then, on Monday, a hedge fund announced a takeover bid that could devastate the Nebraska news business. As a longtime Nebraska journalist, and a lifelong Nebraskan, I think it’s important to understand how and why this matters.
We quickly partnered with Iowa Public Media and the NPR Midwest Newsroom, which agreed to let us run their story. Read the news here. I also strongly encourage you to read this eye-opening story from the Atlantic Monthly on the secretive hedge fund now bidding to buy nearly every daily Nebraska newspaper.
As The Atlantic reports, Alden slashes newsroom jobs at double the rate of other newspaper companies. If the company gets to follow its normal playbook here, Nebraska would soon have fewer reporters, editors and photographers covering the Nebraska Legislature, city council meetings, school boards, high school football games, community events…the good, bad and ugly stuff that matters where you live.
That loss of coverage has a demonstrable and dire effect on our democracy. As the story points out, when a local newspaper shrinks or closes, research shows that voter turnout goes down. Political polarization goes up. And misinformation spreads like wildfire. A functioning local press is as crucial to a city or state as roads or trash removal. It is infrastructure.
We founded Flatwater Free Press because we believe local journalism needs to be funded, supported and practiced in new and innovative ways. We’re working hard to grow our small and mighty staff so that we can help to answer the journalistic challenges of today and tomorrow.
But we also founded FFP to support and buttress the daily journalism done by existing media outlets. Not to replace it, or them. Which is why, on this day before Thanksgiving, we’re hoping for the best while informing you that yes, it can get much worse.
Transparency, hooray: I can’t say this any better than FFP executive director Matt Wynn, so I will let him say it. “We are building the Flatwater Free Press to be as transparent with our audience as we ask institutions to be with us.” FFP started to put its transparency money where its mouth is this week, when we published Wynn’s column about our ethics policy — and in fact, our entire ethics policy! — for you to read.
Tell your Aunt Evelyn: This holiday weekend, help us get the word out about Flatwater Free Press. Follow Flatwater Free Press on Facebook or Twitter and encourage your friends, family members and even that old bat Aunt Evelyn to subscribe to this free weekly email newsletter by providing them this handy-dandy link.
Have a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend.
—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:
- For years, Alyssa Schukar graced the pages of the Omaha World-Herald with some of the most gorgeous photos that any Nebraska photojournalist has ever taken. Now a freelance photographer based in DC, Schukar this week published a photo essay in the New York Times about a struggling Nebraska farm family. It is, in a word, poignant.
- Chris Bowling, editor of the Omaha Reader and a freelancer for us, went deep into an important issue that most of us don’t know much about. Just saying the phrase “tax-increment financing” seems likely to put you to sleep, but Bowling wrote an interesting and important story about how it is used, and why it matters, in Omaha.
- Chris Dunker of the Lincoln Journal Star continues to do a great job of explaining the environmental disaster in Mead. This week, Dunker and photojournalist Gwyneth Roberts released a 20-minute documentary on that subject. It’s worth your time.
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