We published five stories this week, which by my count is a Flatwater Free Press record. It’s a lovely mishmash. An important update to one of our first investigations. An Omaha breaking news story. An absolutely fantastic profile from the Sandhills. An in-depth story from a partner in journalistic crime. And more! Let’s cannonball in off the high dive, shall we?
New rule … Show up for work: Gov. Pillen signed a new law this week, and Sen. Terrell McKinney introduced it. But I know who prompted one part of that law. I’m well aware that one person inspired a switch ensuring that the five members of the Nebraska parole board will now show up for parole board hearings.
Her name is Yanqi Xu.
Two years ago, Yanqi Xu (pronounced Yen-chee Shoe), then a brand-new FFP reporter, squirreled away with a giant parole data set and came back to the newsroom with this shocker. The Nebraska parole board only appeared together at parole hearings 37% of the time. And this very much mattered, she explained. Why? Because when they weren’t all there, the rate that the board paroled inmates dropped markedly. That left more parole-eligible people inside Nebraska’s overcrowded prison system.
Read Yanqi’s original investigation here.
And her follow-up here, when the board started showing up for hearings more in the months after her first story. (Shocking.)
And now state law says that parole board members can only miss a few parole board hearings a year.
Authored by McKinney. Signed by Pillen. Inspired by Xu’s stellar reporting.
A Nebraska story: At 7 years old, she found herself alone in a hotel room, forced to care for her younger siblings as best she could, chronically absent from school, her future endangered.
On Saturday, Aliyah American Horse, now 19, will walk to the front of the stage at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., where the recent graduate of Gordon-Rushville High School will recite poetry that brought her to this dazzling place, and made her one of four finalists for National Youth Poet Laureate.
The young Lakota poet told him this:
“I write my poetry for the kids who have lived the same life I did.”
Omaha crackup: We don’t generally cover breaking news. But when one of our reporters is the lone reporter at a meeting that devolves into something nearing anarchy and triggers the resignation of two board members, we do cover breaking news. Read FFP Omaha reporter Jeremy Turley’s story on an education board that, near the end of a bonkers meeting, voted to keep an interim CEO linked to sexual harassment allegations while he led a City of Omaha department.
This week’s soul cleanser: This week, advancement director Barbara Soderlin and I had the pleasure of jumping on a Zoom call with the human who surely wins the prize for farthest flung subscriber to this newsletter. On the other end of the call: Lana Wall, a Scottsbluff native, a fellow UNL journalism grad, a fellow one-time newspaper reporter, an accomplished librarian and university library administrator — and a person who since 1971 has lived in Tasmania, an island state of Australia.
It was Monday afternoon here. It was Tuesday morning there. It was Lana’s birthday. She was wearing Husker red, to let us know that while she’s 9,263 miles away, she remains Nebraskan to the core. Our chat made my day.
I hope you had a happy birthday, Lana. If anyone else reading this newsletter is currently residing in a spot that beats Tasmania, shoot me a note.
Kavahn for the win: Remember that Ohio company that was buying up homes in North Omaha at a shocking rate? We revealed VineBrook’s buying spree here back in May 2022.
Kavahn Mansouri of Midwest Newsroom has been doing a more holistic, region-wide look at VineBrook’s buying practices, and why it matters. This week, we republished his story about how VineBrook — which owns 24,000 single-family homes nationwide — is deeply in debt, and now starting for the first time to sell.
It’s very, very cool to be a part of a new era in Nebraska and national journalism where media outlets work together, either formally or informally, to tell important stories. This is a big hill. We need as many people pushing the boulder up that sucker as possible.
Updates, updates, updates: Gov. Pillen signed two more bills this week that connect to previous Flatwater stories written by the aforementioned Turley. School districts can no longer send school meal debts to collections agencies. And the state made some changes to the Omaha Housing Authority. Get more info here.
Thanks to our sponsor: This week I’m pleased to thank Ho-Chunk, Inc., the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska’s economic development arm and the largest minority-owned business in Nebraska. Ho-Chunk has been a sponsor from the beginning…thank you for supporting the mission of nonprofit journalism as we tell important stories from every corner of this state.
Questions wanted: Some of our best story ideas come from readers, and they typically start with a burning question that demands an answer. Have a question that a FFP reporter need to look into? Complete this form or reach our newsroom at [email protected].
See you next week, fam.
—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:
- U.S. Sen. Pete Ricketts dropped a cool half-million dollars into a petition drive that’s seeking to keep Nebraska’s current 12-week abortion ban in place. Story by Elizabeth Rembert of Nebraska Public Media, who I believe broke this one.
- This seriously will not stop happening. Cindy Gonzalez of the Nebraska Examiner with the latest story of a small-town embezzlement.
We did a (now slightly dated) look at how shockingly often this is happening around Nebraska. - Gov. Pillen’s plan to cut property taxes fell apart in the Nebraska Legislature this week, and the governor was … not happy. The Legislature will now likely be called into special session to tangle more about taxation — and also maybe (if the votes are there) to debate changing Nebraska to a “winner-take-all” state for presidential electoral votes.
Story by the Journal Star’s Andrew Wegley. (May require subscription for some readers.) - Student loan borrowers are delaying getting married, buying homes and moving out of their parents’ houses, according to this story from WOWT.
- History Nebraska, long known as the Nebraska Historical Society, has been an independent state entity since 1878, reports the Examiner’s Paul Hammel. But that’s changing in 2024.
- The state of Nebraska is losing thousands of college graduates each year, an out-migration “brain drain” that is getting worse, reports KETV’s Bill Schammert.
- Small-town newspapers are closing around the Midwest. But there are bright spots, reports Harvest Public Media, published here by Nebraska Public Media.
- And finally, one last story, a national one that will affect Nebraskans’ lives — and maybe improve our health. For the first time, the federal government will implement drinking water standards on “forever chemicals.”
