Reliable, Trustworthy Reporting, Capturing The Heartbeat Of Our Community
Reliable, Trustworthy Reporting, Capturing The Heartbeat Of Our Community
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For nearly 30 years, I’ve been a season ticket holder for Nebraska volleyball matches. I also used to cover the sport. I was around when then-Coach Terry Pettit was begging football fans to attend volleyball matches after watching a football game. Way back in the day (years before I caught the volleyball bug) loyal fans used to set up their own folding chairs so they could watch a match. Fast forward to today. Home volleyball matches in Lincoln have been sold out for years, making it harder f...
A good buddy has a favorite saying: “We’re all smart. We have smartphones.” It’s funny, and I’ve used it several times. After all, smartphones have, in a lot of ways, made our lives easier and smarter. Got an unfamiliar address to find? Use the smartphone to give you directions. Hungry for a burrito? Use a smartphone to find the nearest restaurant. Engaged in a heated argument over who hit the most home runs, Willie Stargell or Harmon Killebrew? Google it on your smartphone. They have basically...
Back in the day, reporters used to be able to hitch a ride with the governor or National Guard to the site of a disastrous tornado or flood. One of those trips involved a flight to Coleridge, in northeast Nebraska, after a tornado had destroyed two farm homes and damaged several residences on the north edge of the town. At one of the farms, the owner stood just outside the now-bare foundation where his house once stood. The house was gone. “It could have been worse,” he said. No one had bee...
Gov. Jim Pillen has always insisted that he’s “not a politician,” but more of a regular guy. “Speech-i-fying” isn’t his cup of rhetorical tea. I’m sure he’d admit that. But every so often, we get evidence of, shall we say, a misstep of the vocal variety. Most recently, it was when he was signing an executive order intended to “further eradicate” antisemitism, a worthy goal. Pillen had already ordered state agencies to use a definition of antisemitism developed by an organization, the I...
A crusty, old state worker once told me that "the story of government is not what is said is not so, it is what is so is not said." Wise words that seem to get wiser by the year. That's because the opportunity to actually interview an elected officer or state agency director, face to face, with no questions off the table, are getting as rare as a snowstorm in June. Most often – almost always – a request to talk to a governor, director or congressional representative goes unanswered and goes to v...
Memorial Day has come and gone, so it's time to hit the road. As a lover of Nebraska stuff (you know, corn, the Huskers, Busch Light) I've never understood why more people don't vacation in our state. There's plenty of stuff to see and experience. And with gas prices through the roof, you can save a buck or two. But I guess the Cornhusker State isn't for everybody. (Oops, that last phrase got a state tourism director fired. Better be careful). Anyway, here's my list of cool, and sometimes...
Elections often bring surprises, but the upset victory of retired Omaha businessman Scott Petersen in the Republican primary for Secretary of State wasn’t that surprising. Sure, he defeated an incumbent, Lincoln attorney Bob Evnen, who was seeking a third, four-year term. His office runs our state elections and handles several different tasks, like registering corporations. More than a couple of things were working in Petersen’s favor. First off, Petersen appeared to mount a more aggressive camp...
Every so often, you’re reminded that people are generally good. And, you get some idea how important the media is in helping generate good news. My latest refresher came via a story I wrote for the Nebraska Examiner, an online news site that used to consume most of my labors. It involved a woman I met when writing for the Omaha World-Herald about the tiny village of Whiteclay, where four beer stores were selling more than 3 million cans of beer a year to residents of the nearby Pine Ridge Indian...
Rumors are as common around the State Capitol as brome grass in a roadside ditch. It's not called "The Hall of Hot Winds" for nothing, And that rumor mill gets cranked up big time during election season, when there's speculation aplenty about who is running and who is not, and who can win and who cannot. By the time you've read this, you've probably already voted in the May 12 primary. The rumor mill had Falls City businessman Charles Herbster as a likely primary challenger to incumbent Jim...
Back in the day, twice each year, a debate would break out at the news bureau where I used to work: "Who is going to write the gas tax story?" It was a story you could write in your sleep. "Nebraska's variable gas tax is rising/dropping to ... blah, blah, blah." But it was kind of important. A rise would mean a couple pennies more paid in taxes per gallon; a drop, a penny or two of a break. Nebraska's gas tax is called "variable" because the rate was set based on the calculated needs of state...
Almost every time I head over to the local work-out joint, there's some petition circulators waiting. They scurry up and ask for my signature on a proposed ballot initiative that would make it harder for state legislators to change laws that voters have passed at the ballot box. Nebraska is one of only 26 states that allow voters – if they collect enough signatures to put something on the ballot – to directly pass laws and constitutional amendments, or to repeal such measures via a ref...
Some State Capitol watchers say they can't relax until state legislators go home for the year. As a reporter who chased the occupants of the "Hall of Hot Winds" for too many decades, I can attest that the fire drill-like finish to legislative sessions leaves you ready for something different. Or a stiff drink. Late-night sessions – which used to be a rarity – are par for the course these days, with debates extending 12 hours or more in the waning days of a legislative session. Filibusters also u...
"To the Arch by March." That was the scary slogan circulating throughout Omaha back in the 1980s when both Union Pacific and ConAgra were threatening to move their corporate headquarters out of the River City. (U.P. was said to be looking at St. Louis, home of the Gateway Arch.) That meant that hundreds of good paying jobs would be leaving Nebraska and that Omaha's status as a home of corporate headquarters would be diminished. Never fear, the Nebraska Legislature and then-Gov. Kay Orr... Full story
The Nebraska Legislature began talking about "exterrestrials" the other day, and well, who could pass up writing about that? I have a buddy who insists that an alien craft hovered over his acreage outside of Ashland. There's another buddy who is convinced that he was followed by an alien ship while driving down a remote western Nebraska highway. So I've heard some stories. Thanks to these new-fangled "prediction markets" like Kalshi and Polymarket, we can actually place bets on the chances that...
If you're like me, you were sickened to read about the wildfires running amok across sections of Nebraska in mid March. Thousands and thousands of acres, as far as the eye could see in areas of the Sandhills, in bluffs and hills southeast of North Platte and south of Kilgore, and (once again) in areas near the Nebraska National Forest in Halsey. As I write this, more than 800,000 acres have burned, according to the Nebraska Public Media. That's pasture that could feed hundreds of thousands of...
Way back in the day, when I was in high school, I had a summer job of mopping floors at a local hospital. Being a janitor was a really satisfying job because when you were done, you could easily see what you had accomplished, unlike a lot of other occupations. Anyway, one of my compatriots on the broom was a guy named Howard Johnson. Howard was as big as an actual Howard Johnson's and he had an axiom for work: "the simplest way is the best way." As I recently watched the Nebraska Legislature str...
One of my favorite political slogans of all time is “a solution in search of a problem.” It’s used frequently in debates at the Nebraska Legislature to describe a proposal or idea that imposes new rules and restrictions to address a problem that doesn’t exist. You might call it “government overreach,” too. Anyway, the “solution in search of a problem” line is being used often today to describe President Trump’s efforts to change election laws via the dramatically labeled “SAVE America Act...
There are ways to change state policies, and there are other ways to change state policies. Which brings us to the "death by a thousand cuts" of the Nebraska Environmental Trust. The Trust was created back in 1992, when Nebraska voters decided to join a growing number of states launched state lotteries to generate extra revenue. (That seems like centuries ago, before casinos were in every big city, and before you could lose a paycheck in an afternoon at a "skill game" in your local tavern. It wa...
Mentoring programs are a great thing. They help kids – mostly kids in single-parent families – gain confidence, and learn leadership and life skills from adults. I've seen first-hand how beneficial they are, first as a "big brother" in the Big Brothers-Big Sisters program, and then as a participant in the TeamMates Mentoring program. My "little brother" was the first in his family to graduate from high school (imagine that!) and my TeamMate graduated from high school despite problems with att...
Can we all agree on one thing? Seeing Americans shot and killed on American streets by fellow Americans is not at all good. I've purposely waited to write about the killing of two people on the streets of Minneapolis by agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Border Patrol to allow more information to come out. There was quite a rush to judgment in both cases. Renee Good, who was shot and killed a month ago, was immediately labeled a "domestic terrorist" who "ran over" a federal...
What is it about Nebraskans and the slab of aluminum we bolt onto the back of our cars, the license plate? For some reason, we Cornhuskers get emotional over the design of the state's plates. There are gripes aplenty. "It's too boring." "You can't see the graphic." "It doesn't represent our state." "It doesn't inspire people to visit or live there." Nebraskans' opinions about license plates are almost as strong as those about the second-string quarterback for the Huskers. Why isn't that guy...
Tom Osborne for the Nebraska Hall of Fame? Sign me up. But maybe it's worth spending a bit of time considering the rules for induction into the state's most prestigious honor. They aren't very good. First off, a person must have been dead for 35 years before they can be considered. That always made me wonder, will people remember how big a deal night-show host Johnny Carson, of Norfolk, was? He was the undisputed "King of Late Night" who regularly reminded us that he was from Nebraska. Heck,...
It's one thing to try and cut out shenanigans in state government and another if you're part of it. Gov. Jim Pillen's recent "State of the State" address laid out plenty of goals to cut out funny business in state government, from ending frivolous lawsuits to reversing tax breaks for special interests. But not mentioned was a sizable, no-bid contract the governor approved in 2024 for a lobbyist he was well acquainted with, via overseas trade missions and events in Nebraska. State Auditor Mike...
As a reporter, you cover all kinds of stories. Stories about natural disasters, murders, grandmas who collect cookie jars and good samaritans. But it's the stories about fraud that make you scratch your head the most. What drives people, usually already prosperous people, to steal from their local sports club, collections for a sick person, or the town treasury? And, of course, there's all those scams on the internet. Often, the stealing is done by someone who appeared trustworthy and honest....
The first time I walked into the State Capitol, I wondered "what is making all these people walk like Olympic racers down these halls?" I almost got run over by some walkers; the new guy needed to get out of the way. To be sure, the Capitol hallways extend in a square, making them ideal for a quick walk around the square for exercise or just to clear the brain. And if you hang around the Capitol long enough, you realize that people who work there – either as staffers or elected officials – nee...
