Reliable, Trustworthy Reporting, Capturing The Heartbeat Of Our Community
Reliable, Trustworthy Reporting, Capturing The Heartbeat Of Our Community
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WEEPING WATER – Superintendent Kevin Reiman had a problem. He couldn’t find new teachers. So, in spring 2022, Reiman took an idea to the school board of Weeping Water Public Schools. What about a four-day school week? Reiman expected the board to take a year to study the possibility. Instead, it voted, unanimously: Yes. This fall, Weeping Water became at least the sixth Nebraska school district to adopt a four-day week. It’s a move that thrilled the school’s teachers, burnt out after teaching through a pandemic. And it’s worked better than expe...
It happened on a late spring Saturday afternoon in Omaha. The cool mid-May breeze caused the fans ringing Westside High School’s modest football field to curl up under their blankets and jackets. They watched, peering through the late afternoon sun, as 16 high school lacrosse players made history. The NorthStar lacrosse team, a group of Black boys from North Omaha, faced off against the private Creighton Prep High School for the 2022 junior varsity Nebraska state title. Creighton Prep’s seasoned players warmed up along the sidelines, while sev...
Garrett Dwyer runs about 500 head of Hereford and Angus cattle on his Bartlett ranch on the east edge of the Sandhills. The land he's on today has been in his family since 1894, when his great-great grandfather homesteaded it. Dwyer, who grew up there, is now the fifth generation in his family to ranch this land. But Dwyer didn't take over the family ranch until he did something far from home. For five years, he served in the U.S. Marine Corps, including two combat tours in Iraq. Now he's...
As Justin Taubenheim combined soybeans in a Buffalo County field on an October afternoon, he thought about why he does it. "I'm not farming to get rich,” he said. “I'm farming to maintain a legacy, a way of life. Faith, family and farming, in that order. The farm is kinda like the icing on the cake." Taubenheim, 31, sports fewer gray hairs than your normal Nebraska farmer. The average age of a principal Nebraska farm or ranch operator: 56.4 years old, according to census figures. The rising worry: There won’t be a next generation to carry...
With her laptop open and credit card out, Allyson Mendoza watched the clock flip from 7:59 to 8:00 a.m. “Register now” popped up on her screen. The mother of three had set timers and reminders for this moment weeks in advance of the March deadline. By 8:02 a.m., she had scored spots for her two oldest children at Hummel Day Camp, the wildly popular city-run day camp held for the last 70 summers in Omaha’s Hummel Park. She had done so with mere minutes to spare. “It’s the most stressful 10 minutes of my life, and I’m a lawyer,” Mendoza said....
Under the warm lights of the Casa Bovina dining room, a round of Certified Piedmontese rib cap glows red, like a rare jewel. A selection of house-cured charcuterie made from Nebraska-raised Mangalitsa pork is served artfully arranged on a slab of reclaimed wood. Beef Wellington - a dish chef Zach Midgett, who came to Lincoln from Napa Valley's famed French Laundry, says he's still perfecting - arrives beautifully plated, with a piece of fork-tender Piedmontese meat at its center, surrounded by...
Pretend for a moment that Nebraska somehow halted all use of nitrogen fertilizer – not a single speck more on our lawns, golf courses and corn fields. What would happen? Nothing fast. That's because, experts say, generations of corn growing, feedlot runoff and oft-unwitting nitrogen overuse has left a legacy of nitrate, creeping slowly downward toward our water supply. "It's there, it's moving towards the groundwater, and there's not a thing we can do about it," said Don Batie, a farmer near L...
A baby boy, who was born in Bethlehem, may well hold the future of the world in his tiny hands. Witnesses report a man and women recently arrived at a local inn, which did not have any vacancies. "Instead, I offered them a spot in the stable," said the innkeeper. The young couple agreed to the businessman's offer. The story of how and why the couple arrived in Bethlehem, and the importance of the baby's birth, is now being told around the world. According to the young mother, named Mary, an...
Third-party ads that targeted state Sen. Tony Vargas during his recent run for U.S. Congress featured incredulous voices, baffled over a seemingly selfish move: He wanted to "double his own salary" with taxpayer money. What the ads didn't say: Nebraska's 49 lawmakers have been paid $12,000 a year since George H. W. Bush was first elected president, leg warmers were en vogue and Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" blasted unironically from boomboxes. If their pay had kept pace with inflation...
McCOOK – In a 100-year-old building in downtown McCook, push the round number six and an elevator ride takes you up, up, up to the highest floor in this railroad town’s tallest building. The elevator lurches stopped. The doors slide open. And here it is – an open concrete floor covered in hundreds of glittering metal sculptures, carved wooden figures, “outsider art” paintings by artists who have shown work in New York, Washington D.C., London. The space is an explosion of color and texture. It’s a global contemporary art tour. It’s a four...
Student pride – and the graduation rate – are on the upswing at the public school on the Santee Native Reservation. School leaders trace that success to a new effort to teach students the tribe’s culture. For the first time, students are learning Santee Dakota history, language and customs – subjects long ago banned. The new cultural program has boosted attendance and helped the iSanti Community School in Niobrara hit a 100% graduation rate two years running, school leaders say. It hasn’t...
CORTLAND – It's five days before the big day. The Model A dashes down West Fourth Street. Its driver pulls up to a brick storefront and strolls inside, jaunty, dressed in his Sunday best. The black-and-white scene turns technicolor, like a Gage County "Pleasantville," as a brunette with cherry red lips leans in with a coffee pot and winks. Welcome to Paper Moon Pastries, the 1930s-style small-town bakery inspired by a classic movie – its public introduction captured by drone and iPhone. Tha...
The powers that Google and Facebook have over economic and political power in society – especially over the news industry-has caught the attention of lawmakers in Washington, DC. After a close election and many worries over the quality of public debate, many ask if social media have played a role in the misinformation that erodes our free press and plagues our democracy. Nowhere is this power more daunting than in the social media giants' use of news organizations' reporting, which the p...
The farmer was growing impatient. He and dozens of other central Nebraska farmers had gathered for mandatory training in Columbus a few weeks before last Christmas. In response to high nitrate levels, the Lower Loup Natural Resources District had designated a "Phase 3 area." That led to new requirements – like this training to help farmers manage their nitrogen fertilizer use. The farmer didn't like this. He told NRD leaders he had been drinking water containing nitrate at 40 parts per m...
In the summer of 1978, Allen Wilke slammed the brakes. He did this often. A true plantsman, he observed everything but the road itself. He would spy a flowering prickly pear in the ditch, a wild grapevine. He would double back without warning, often sending his son and daughter – half asleep in his gutted cargo van's backseat – tumbling forward with their luggage. This time, the plantsman was alone. He was puttering through the Sandhills on Highway 91, a mile west of Taylor, when a tall, ski...
Nick Herringer claps along with a metronome. He draws lines on a big screen, repeating patterns drawn by the computer. He identifies icons of cars when they flash before his eyes. This is the 22-year-old's speech and cognitive therapy, which he has been doing at least twice a week. Every week. For three years. Nick's thick brown hair hides a massive, ear-to-ear scar from his four brain surgeries for glioblastoma, an aggressive brain cancer he has battled since he was a teenager. His mom, Tammy Herringer, drives Nick to therapy and back. She...
Do you remember what it was like to not be able to get the answer to an elusive question as soon as you asked it? Like how long sea turtles live? Or how far away is the sun? Or the name of that actor from that one movie? Before the omni-present Google and smartphone, these answers were likely missing (or required a lot of work to find). So when these questions came up in the past, conversation would stop. That's because the language of America is our common understanding of the facts of the...
Interesting question our office has received on more than one occasion: Why does SAM sometimes run articles from other areas of Nebraska? The answer is relatively simple. We are Nebraska. I like to think our readers want to learn more about this place we call home. When we share articles from Flatwater Free Press or Nebraska Examiner or Nebraska News Service, our goal is to offer coverage that is not only interesting, but may have an impact on our lives. For example, on Page 3 in this week’s edi...
ZACH WENDLING Nebraska News Service Ed. note: This piece is included in UNL's Democracy Day project, a national intiative where more than 300 news outlets published stories about democracy in the United States. In just a little over a year, Nebraska's media landscape has expanded to uncover and shed light on more undercovered stories with the addition of two new publications. The Flatwater Free Press, which published its first stories on Sept. 3, 2021, preceded the launch of the Nebraska...
Kylie Adolf knows what it takes to run a successful second-grade classroom. She needs jump ropes. Tissues. Colorful paper. Puzzles. A princess puzzle is always a good idea. But the Omaha second-grade teacher can't request those supplies from her school and expect to find them in her supply closet the next week. There are no funds in the budget for that. Instead, she spends her own money out of her teacher's paycheck. Instead, she posts to Facebook and asks friends and strangers for help. "My...
Jasmine Gutschow felt nauseous when she woke up a few days before Thanksgiving last year. She brushed it off as typical pregnancy symptoms. She told her fiance he should head into work – the baby, not due for six more weeks, wouldn't be coming anytime soon. Three hours later, after her contractions started, after they sped for the hospital, after their 2003 Chevy Tahoe broke down, after her contractions quickened to every two minutes and Gutschow's fiance frantically dialed 911, it had become c...
Google and Facebook have enormous economic and political power in society – especially over the news industry. Many ask if they have played a role in the misinformation that erodes our free press and plagues our democracy. Google and Facebook have a duopoly of the distribution of digital news content, which drives people to their platforms where they make money. The platforms hoard critical data and use clever tactics, like reframing stories in rich previews, to keep users on their sites – sip...
Growing up on a hill overlooking North Omaha during World War II, Mary Carpenter remembers the numerous vegetable plots, called victory gardens, that dotted her Florence neighborhood. “Everybody had one,” said Carpenter, the reporter’s mother-in-law. “We grew everything - asparagus, potatoes, tomatoes, black raspberries, pears, even grapes. That’s what fed us and supplemented our food.” Over the ensuing decades, many of those gardens disappeared as grocery stores started carrying seasonal produce year round. Yet 80 years later, everything...
NFPW Communicator of Achievement director Karen Stensrud and NPW COA director Ruth Brown contributed to this article. LuAnn Schindler of Clearwater received the 2022 Communicator of Achievement Award from the National Federation of Press Women. This prestigious award has been given for 65 years. Schindler received the honor during a celebration at the organization's annual conference, held June 23 to 25, in Fargo, North Dakota. Now in its 85th year, NFPW is a nationwide organization of...
As we gather to celebrate Independence Day, it's a good time to reflect on how our most fundamental freedoms have served this nation well. It's an even better time to think about what would happen if those liberties were taken away. Sadly, the latter doesn't take much imagination in 2022. Your closest video screen will show you scenes of Russian troops pummeling Ukraine with the support of a majority of the Russian people. The Russian public has been told that their country is doing noble work...
