Honestly, I didn’t know anyone in Nebraska played lacrosse. If I had known that, I would have assumed it’s the provenance of private schools and affluent families.
Which, sure. Even at the college level, as our story today shows, the sport is stunningly white.
Which makes it all the more interesting that the reigning Nebraska junior varsity state champ in the sport is a group of Black teenagers who attend an after-school program meant to help them graduate high school on time.
Correspondent Lauryn Higgins has the story of NorthStar, where the brand-new lacrosse players hadn’t even heard of the sport until a few years ago — and now are state champs.
Our day in court: FFP’s Executive Director Matt Wynn took the stand yesterday, looking to my eye rather uncomfortable in a suit and tie. Matt wasn’t on trial, which may surprise anyone who met him back when he was a burgeoning juvenile delinquent.
He and FFP were inside a Lancaster County courtroom yesterday for a frustrating but also very worthwhile reason.
We are fighting the Nebraska Department of Environment and Energy, who has thus far de-facto refused to give us emails we requested. These emails tie to our reporting on Nebraska’s nitrate-in-drinking water problem. These emails are public because they were written by public employees whose salaries are paid for by Nebraska taxpayers.
Learn more about the hearing from Lori Pilger’s nice story in the Lincoln Journal Star and Bill Kelly’s equally nice story for Nebraska Public Media.
Bottom line to me: Public records are meant to be public. A ridiculous price tag placed on a routine public records request is a de-facto denial of that request because it stops news organizations like ours — and readers like you — from getting the whole story.
Here’s hoping the judge agrees. The aforementioned Wynn, last seen flop sweating on the stand, reports that the hearing went well yesterday. We eagerly await a ruling.
Natalia in the news: Natalia Alamdari, your brand-new Seacrest Greater Nebraska reporter, has been all over the place speaking about her latest story, on how a cryptocurrency data center on the outskirts of Kearney uses as much energy as the rest of the city combined. Here she is being interviewed about that story on News Channel Nebraska. Here she is on a recent podcast, if you care to dive deeper.
Alamdari, as she mentioned in this very newsletter last week, is also doing semi-routine office hours to hear story ideas from residents of Greater Nebraska (aka the places outside of Lincoln and Omaha). Sign up for one here.
She reports the office hours she’s done so far have been a great success. It’s likely that we will expand this program to other reporters in the future.
Feedback wanted: If you haven’t already, please take a few minutes to tell us what you may or may not like about FFP. It’s just three questions, and your responses are anonymous. Take our reader survey here.
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:
- A wild story from Elk Creek, Nebraska, and the New York Times. A company may soon be mining there. For metals like “niobium, scandium, titanium and rare earths.” A must-read story from NYT reporter Dionne Searcey, who I must add is a Nebraska native and a fellow graduate of UNL. Go Huskers.
- The Nebraska Legislature has repeatedly tried and failed to do what many other states have done — reduce their prison population. Now, a new report says the state may need a new state pen and also 1,500 additional beds. As this story from the OWH’s Henry Cordes notes, adding those beds will likely cost hundreds of millions of additional dollars.
- If you are in danger of getting evicted, it really, really helps to have a lawyer. But only 9% of tenants who show up for eviction court dates have a lawyer, as opposed to 100% of landlords. KETV’s Bill Schammert on the power imbalance of evictions.
- Farming and ranching are stressful. Here’s a story on one rancher’s stressful winter, courtesy of Brownfield Ag News.
- New Gov. Jim Pillen is trying to cut taxes. Here’s the Nebraska Examiner’s Paul Hammel on what that might look like, both for taxpayers and state institutions — like community colleges — that believe they may be harmed.
- Both supporters and opponents crowded into the Nebraska Legislature to make their opinions known on a bill that, if passed, would ban most abortions in Nebraska. The OWH’s Erin Bamer with the story.
