2021 has been a year like no other.
Yes, much of it’s been miserable. But I’ll always remember it fondly for finally letting us launch the Flatwater Free Press.
Your support is how we know we’re doing the right thing. As one of our first donors, I want to give you a peek behind the curtain into everything we’ve done and preview some of our plans for the future.
Journalism
After a strenuous 18 months of planning, we started publishing in September. Since then, we’ve written stories that celebrate the best of Nebraska and draw attention to our shortcomings.
We’re 30 stories in. I couldn’t be more proud of this body of work.
Our stories have examined where Nebraska had the most success putting lifesaving COVID-19 vaccines in arms — and why. They’ve highlighted a Kenyan immigrant who brought together his homeland and adopted home of Nebraska to start a coffee empire and celebrated a small-town cafe thriving in the 21st century economy. They’ve spotlighted the human cost of hospitals overcrowded with COVID-19 patients. Our reporters analyzed a quarter-century of Omaha budgets to see how the library has been getting the squeeze, exposed how a paperwork mix-up left people with disabilities on the curb (literally!), and brought attention to the legal gymnastics farmers have to perform to raise Nebraska’s nascent hemp crop.
There is far, far more to come. Our first two reporters, Natalia Alamdari and Yanqi Xu, are deep in the weeds on issues that will benefit from the disinfectant powers of sunshine. Expect to see those stories in January. We’re also embarking on partnerships with some of our favorite newsrooms in the state (and country!) to supercharge the reporting process and dedicate the time and attention big issues demand. We’re fighting open records battles on a few fronts that we believe will shed light on how our institutions operate.
We’ll continue to do weekly feature stories with a growing army of freelancers. So long as they desire, Cindy Lange-Kubick, Lori Potter and all the rest will have a storytelling platform.
Distribution
Maybe the biggest surprise for me is how quickly our audience has grown. Our newsletter, deftly managed by editor Matthew Hansen, has blown away my expectations. In the spring, after months of research, we made an educated goal of 500 subscribers by the end of the year.
Our last newsletter went to nearly 4,000.
Here’s the best part: The audience is as passionate as we are. When I was at MedPage Today, one of my responsibilities was managing a few key newsletters. It was a good week when more than 10% of our subscribers opened the dang things.
At the Flatwater Free Press, that rate has yet to dip below 50%.
That passion is a huge vote of confidence for what we’re building. It’s just the tip of the iceberg.
One of the craziest pitches in this whole endeavor was the dream of creating a shared story for Nebraska, a post-partisan connectivity that could resonate across the massive state we call home.
Each week, we dutifully distribute our work — at no charge — to every news outlet. Every newspaper, radio station, TV station, magazine and more get access. We can see our stories getting picked up and used. We trusted the plan was working.
But, as all journalists know, that’s just the first step. Trust, sure. But verify.
Earlier this month, we got our verification.
Universal Information Services, a global leader in news monitoring and public relations measurement, ran a pro bono analysis of one month of our work. During November, they found, the average FFP story reached a whopping 400,000 Nebraskans. That’s one-fourth of all adults in the state.
That analysis didn’t factor in some national organizations who later picked up our stories. Civil Eats and Business Insider, each with a massive audience of its own, once again helped us share Nebraska’s stories with the world.
Those two numbers speak to a huge opportunity for growth. 1% of our audience subscribes to our newsletter. Lots of people who know our work don’t know it comes from us; in my experience, they probably don’t even know we exist. For that reason, we will be doing more marketing in 2022.
Transparency
Stories aren’t our only journalistic impact. A major part of my career has been dedicated to making public information as easily accessible and useful as possible. Naturally, that’s going to be baked into the Flatwater Free Press.
Our first government transparency project looked at state salaries, which we published in October. Already, that tool has become open source-journalism infrastructure, informing reporting about state employees by media throughout Nebraska. It’s routinely one of the most popular parts of our website, and story tips from its contents keep flowing in.
We plan to augment the tool, adding some new types of government entities, and report some pieces based on the data early next year. We’re grateful to the Platte Institute for their support and insight as we brought that to fruition. Special thanks to Adam Weinberg and Code for Nebraska, who got in the trenches with us to figure out how to make the best product possible.
I’m pleased to share that our partnership will extend into 2022. We’re also actively seeking sponsors for another transparency project looking into campaign finance.
Outreach
One of the most rewarding parts of our kickoff has been the listening sessions. Every month, we head somewhere with a purposely ill-defined mission: to listen.
In Norfolk, that meant joining a Rotary Club, meeting with the public at the library and hosting a happy hour. In Nebraska City, that meant a day of meetings with stakeholders — seriously, eight solid hours — a Rotary Club and a public session at the library. In McCook, we met with teachers, business owners, artists and more before heading to the Nebraska Community Foundation’s annual celebration of all the incredible success happening in towns border to border.
We walk away from each trip with a fistful of story ideas. What’s incredible to me, as a lifelong Omahan, is how some of the same concepts come up time and time again from Greater Nebraska.
We’ve already started kicking the tires on those endemic, statewide issues. You will see stories looking into the problems (and, ideally, identifying solutions) in the first quarter next year.
Business
Speaking of the Nebraska Community Foundation, we were blessed to have such a devoted, responsible, mission-driven organization agree to be our fiscal sponsor. They get the power of storytelling, and their commitment to Nebraska is something that benefits us all.
Their support and wisdom has been behind so many of this organization’s early moves. President and CEO Jeff Yost, especially, has been an inspiration for how we’ve handled our approach to content. I’m lucky to call him a friend.
In mid-December, we received word that the Nebraska Journalism Trust, the legal entity that operates the Flatwater Free Press, has been recognized by the IRS as a nonprofit organization all its own. With this designation, we have the option of transitioning out of the fiscal sponsor arrangement. It would give us a little more flexibility in how we go about accepting donations and other business-side practices. We’re still weighing how to go about taking advantage. In the meantime, we’re thrilled to remain affiliated with such an incredible organization.
For pretty much my whole life, journalism has had two distinct faces. It’s a force for good: It changes laws, exposes bad policy, puts bad guys in prison. It’s also a business-side disaster: When I was at the Arizona Republic, I went through four managers in six months due to attrition and layoffs.
The Nebraska Journalism Trust is positioning itself to do both journalism and business, boldly and correctly, for the long term. We’re building a foundation that will ensure storytelling and the search for truth has a home in Nebraska for decades to come.
In fact, it’s with that in mind that we partnered with Humanities Nebraska on a public discussion to look at what the future holds for journalism here in our home state. We’re amassing a who’s who of movers and shakers doing the work who can weigh in on what’s working and what’s not. You can expect more details soon. We hope you join us.
That discussion will come as FFP levels up its revenue streams. In sticking with our “collaborate, not compete” maxim, we’ll do so with a special eye toward leaving the legacy media business model undisturbed. Expect to see more sponsorships, swag and other experiments in the coming months.
Thanks to you
The journalism is hitting on all cylinders. The business side, too, is going great guns. Fundraising has been an unqualified success, with many folks like you lining up to support a local independent press. We’re finding success on every front. But more so than anything else, it’s your generosity and passion that make me confident we’re rowing the boat the right direction.
I can’t begin to put in words how much it means to have your buy-in for this important, impactful, moonshot of a dream. So I’ll just say this: Thank you. Your support is truly appreciated, and the lines of communication are open any time. Reach out to me with questions, ideas… or just to jaw about the industry I love. You make this work, and I’m truly indebted.
Looking forward to another incredible year of growth and impact.
Sincerely,
—Matt Wynn, Executive Director
