I’m sitting here in the FFP office on a chilly Friday morning. I’m properly caffeinating with an Americano from the Archetype location near our Millwork Commons office.
And, in the momentary calm of the cool morning, I’m having one clear-as-a-bell thought: We’re committing some serious journalism at Flatwater Free Press. It’s journalism I’m proud of. I hope it’s journalism that is meaningful to you, too.
I can provide you several examples as supporting evidence from this week, two of which we have already published and another story that will be published Sunday.
A week ago I asked Yanqi Xu to pause the (very important) project she’s working on to answer a question that I felt needed an answer. What the heck is gonna happen if and when Nebraska bans abortion?
Yanqi (it’s pronounced Yen-chee) took this question and ran with it, hard. She talked to anti-abortion groups cheering the potential ban. She talked to pro-abortion rights groups who are already planning to usher Nebraskans seeking an abortion to places like southern Illinois — an 8-hour drive from Omaha — and across the Colorado border, where mobile clinics will soon start popping up.
And she sketched a potential future where an abortion may require a flight and a hotel stay — a future where abortion access is inconvenient for a rich Nebraskan, but profoundly difficult for a poor Nebraskan.
This story, which published Thursday, has already become one of the most-read stories in FFP’s short history. It’s also been published in media outlets like the Lincoln Journal Star, Omaha’s KMTV 3 News Now, News Channel Nebraska, the Columbus Telegram, the Hastings Tribune, the Norfolk Daily News and so many more. Which is fantastic, I think. Because no matter how you feel about abortion, understanding its future in Nebraska is important.
Saving a 3-year-old: The boy was too sick to leave his bed inside the refugee hotel where most of the rooms have been rented by Nebraskans. His pulse raced. His fingertips and his lips had turned purple.
And then a group of American doctors and Nebraska nurses and volunteers — a group that had flown from the comfort of their own homes half a world away to near the Ukrainian border — got busy trying to save Stanislav’s life.
FFP reporter Natalia Alamdari was able to tell this story because she was there, in a Warsaw hotel that’s serving as the de facto headquarters of Operation Safe Harbor, a Nebraska-founded group that’s helping Ukrainian refugees. This is her third well-reported and big-hearted story from that trip. (If you haven’t read her main story on Operation Safe Harbor and this incredible hotel, correct that error now.)
Who is buying up Omaha homes? A few months ago, FFP executive director and data dork-in-residence Matt Wynn randomly asked Douglas County officials for some property sales records.
What he found is the subject of our next story, which will be published Sunday evening in conjunction with a broadcast version of the story done by KETV 7. Matt and I have been working on and off for months to tell the story of a company that’s almost entirely unknown in Omaha, how they have become one of the biggest property owners in the city, and why it matters.
It’s been fun working together with Matt, and it’s been great partnering with KETV’s Alexandra Stone, who strikes me as a fantastic reporter. Look for that story starting Sunday evening on our respective websites and social media.
That’s it for this week. Thank you to the 5,100 of you following along to this newsletter and cheering our little chugging journalism train along. We think we can, we think we can, we think we can…and it’s in large part because of you. Share the good news with your family, friends and frenemies: If they want to sign up to receive this newsletter, they can do so for free right here.
Have a wonderful weekend.
Sincerely,
—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:
- You can always count on the World-Herald’s Todd Cooper to dig a really important story out of court files, and sure enough…this week, he told us that the frontrunner for a seat on the Learning Community of Douglas and Sarpy Counties — a woman who had doubled the vote total of her nearest competitor in the primary — had just been indicted for 8 counts of wire fraud and one count of bank fraud. Hello there.
- Hey look, it’s FFP’s Natalia Alamdari on Nebraska Public Media, talking about Ukranian refugees and the Nebraskans trying to help.
- Let’s stick with Nebraska Public Media, where Elizabeth Rembert did an important story on farmers and mental health.
