My junior high football coach always told me that quitters never win. He also told me I stunk as a quarterback. He was right about only one of those things.
New Flatwater Free Press contributor Cindy Lange-Kubick follows the case of those Lincoln Burger King workers who famously resigned en masse and posted a sign on the marquee — “We All Quit.” She also talks to experts about this thing now known as the Great Resignation.
As it turns out, sometimes quitters do, indeed, win.
CLK, welcome to FFP: If you are from Lincoln, have ever lived there, or have visited there more than five times, you likely recognize the byline on the previous story. Cindy Lange-Kubick, longtime Journal Star columnist and an insightful voice in our capital city for decades, recently retired from that newspaper. She has agreed to write a monthly story for FFP, and this is her first. I worked with Cindy many moons ago and know her to be smart, kind, funny and, most importantly, a damn good writer. I’m so excited she has joined us. Be looking for her second story (which she is already working on!) in December.
Fun with library funding: Speaking of debuts, full-time reporter Yanqi Xu also published her first story for FFP this week! She crunched the numbers and learned several interesting (at least to me) things about the city funding of libraries as the City of Omaha works with Heritage Services to potentially build a new library HQ.
Interesting thing No 1: Omaha’s city funding of library operations is 13th out of 15th when compared to neighboring cities that operate their library systems in a similar way.
Interesting thing No 2: The city’s funding for libraries is actually growing…but library spending is also becoming a smaller piece of the overall pie because the city budget is growing at a faster clip.
Read Yanqi’s story, which includes comments from the mayor and other players in this story, and then wave hello to her through your computer or other mobile device screen. Welcome to Nebraska, Yanqi!
In the interest of transparency, I should say that I recused myself per our ethics policy from working on this library story because of a potential conflict with my spouse’s work. I didn’t edit it. I didn’t even read it until the morning it ran on our website. It was the right thing to do, but also crummy, because I’m so excited to work with Yanqi on her projects. She’s already onto her next one, though, a tantalizing story. We hope to publish it in December.
One last thing: Thank you so much to the 90 (?!!?!) of you who became first-time donors to Flatwater Free Press on Giving Tuesday. We now have nearly 350 small-dollar, individual donors to FFP, and that number continues to grow by the day. If you’d like to support the cause, either as a monthly or annual member or as a one-time giver, surf on over here.
To those who have already donated…thank you again from the bottom of my journalist’s heart.
—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:
- KMTV Channel 3 in Omaha did a companion TV piece on Yanqi’s library funding story, interviewing former library director Gary Wasdin and others. They did a nice job, too. We love collaborating with Channel 3 and plan to do it more in the future.
- Nebraska health officials sounded the alarm this week on how COVID’s Delta variant is increasingly sickening and killing younger unvaccinated residents. NTV News in Kearney covered the story.
- The Nebraska Attorney General’s office unveiled a new team meant to combat rising identity theft, fraud and other consumer scams. Lincoln’s 10/11 News with that story.
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