A one-time Lincoln librarian, forever moving around small-town Nebraska and the country with her engineer husband, felt a bit unfulfilled. She decided to write. A mystery novel. It became a bestseller. She wrote another. Ditto. A third. Soon she was the most famous writer of her kind in America, a queen of the genre, our very own Agatha Christie. She shopped Park Avenue and attended Hollywood premieres and hung out in DC with the leader of the free world, a big fan.
Seriously: How had I never heard of Mignon Good Eberhart?
Nebraska doctors’ fear: Some Nebraska doctors who care for pregnant patients fear that the six-week abortion ban in the Nebraska Legislature will have a serious chilling effect on them — and potentially endanger their patients — if it becomes law. Nebraska’s top doctors’ org has another worry: Possible felony charges.
The bill’s supporters, meanwhile, say the doctors’ concerns are political and overblown.
I keep thinking about the first quote in this story from FFP state gov’t watchdog reporter Sara Gentzler — an OB-GYN raising the specter that a hospital committee, or its lawyers, might end up deciding whether or not a sick pregnant woman qualifies for a medically exempt abortion. As the woman and her doctors wait.
Wanna hang out? Our new Omaha office is located at Elevator, a gorgeously remodeled space at 1402 Jones Street that long housed the O’Keefe Elevator Company. They are holding a grand opening event on April 28… which means that Flatwater Free Press is holding an office warming party that same day.
Come meet our staff, visit our office, see the (truly) stunning building, talk journalism and drink a Happy Hour beverage. Learn more and RSVP right here.
A new chapter for Silicon Prairie News: Nebraska’s entrepreneurial community has a new voice, and I am very excited to say her name is Stefanie Monge.
I have known Stef since we worked together long ago at the World-Herald. Since then she’s wandered the Earth, worked inside the startup community ‘round the globe and moved back to Omaha… landing at exactly the point that Nebraska Journalism Trust, the parent org of Flatwater Free Press, was acquiring SPN. She’s your new editor of Silicon Prairie News, a publication that, at its launch, showed us just how crucial small business is in Nebraska.
There are 180,988 such businesses in our state today — that’s half the state’s workforce, Monge reports in her initial column. Nebraska-based companies have recently raised $1 billion in venture capital investment.
I am so excited to have Stef on board here. She’s gonna do an occasional bigger business story for Flatwater Free Press. In the meantime: Sign up for her SPN newsletter if you are an entrepreneur, a member of the startup community or, like me, just wanna know what’s going on.
Thanks to our sponsor: This week, it’s the Nebraska Community Foundation, a shining star of the Cornhusker State. NCF helps smaller communities survive and thrive in this state we call home. Thank you to NCF for supporting the mission of Nebraska nonprofit journalism — for supporting storytelling and investigative reporting in Nebraska’s small towns and rural places.
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:
- Gov. Jim Pillen isn’t telling the public or the press where he’s going to be… even when he’s attending public events. The World-Herald’s Martha Stoddard with the story about the least transparent governor in recent Nebraska history.
- Let’s stay with the World-Herald for a second, because Henry Cordes had a fascinating story about Husker college athletes being paid through the NIL system — and the potential future of that system.
- Is a push for voter ID in the Nebraska Legislature gonna make it harder for Nebraskans to vote — especially Nebraskans living in rural areas? The Nebraska Examiner’s Aaron Sanderford with an important one.
- Nebraska is taking over the New York Times! At least on the story below, which is written by UNL grad (and NYT reporter) Mitch Smith and photographed beautifully by the incomparable photographer Alyssa Schukar, a Lincoln native and World-Herald alum. The story: A different kind of pipeline project, one that could carry millions of tons of carbon dioxide from ethanol plants and inject them into underground rock formations.
- This story has absolutely no connection to Nebraska, but I do not care as it’s one of the finest pieces of narrative journalism I have read in the past year. You should read it, too. Eli Saslow on Phoenix’s (and America’s) homeless crisis, told through the eyes of a small business struggling to survive… and a homeless woman struggling to survive, too.
- In closing: Quite a story of the sign of our times from Kearney. A school board member left a meeting for an hour. A man watching the meeting on his computer became so infuriated that he decided to launch a recall effort against the school board member. The reason for the school board member’s hour-plus absence: He was attending his son’s high school orchestra concert. The anger-fueled tale from NTV News in Kearney.
