Reliable, Trustworthy Reporting, Capturing The Heartbeat Of Our Community
Reliable, Trustworthy Reporting, Capturing The Heartbeat Of Our Community
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Angie Hanson started the morning the same as every other work day. She took her 1-year-old son, Garret, to day care, gave him a kiss and a hug, told him she'd see him later that day, then headed to work. Hours later came a phone call delivering every parent's worst nightmare. Garret wouldn't wake up from his nap. Garret's death on June 27, 2006, was the first of a trio of tragedies that would upend life for Hanson and her family. Her son died, then her husband, then her brother. The small...
There's an old saying about government – "it's not that 'what is said isn't so,' it's what is so isn't said." So that means that someone – maybe a state auditor, maybe a whistleblower, but often a news reporter – needs to dig in and find out what is really happening with our tax dollars and state policies. That's why it was so disgusting to read recently about our "Secretary of War's" crackdown on access by reporters to the Pentagon. Pete Hegseth, a former Fox News weekend host, is the U.S....
Union Pacific Railroad is the lone Nebraska-based company publicly known to have donated to the new White House ballroom championed by President Donald Trump. It's also a Nebraska-based company that will soon need a federal regulator to approve a massive merger that, if green-lit, would give the company control of more than 40% of rail freight traffic in the United States. Trump recently fired the most anti-merger board member of that federal regulator, the Surface Transportation Board, as he...
A decade ago, Nebraska's corrections department allowed hundreds of inmates to leave prison early through a program that few - including judges, lawmakers and the public - knew existed. Corrections leaders eventually scrapped the early-release scheme shortly after probing lawmakers revealed it. Now, as the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services continues to grapple with overcrowding and converts one prison into an immigration detention center, it is trying to create a similar program....
There's an old saying about government – "what is said isn't so, it's what is so isn't said." So that means that someone – maybe a state auditor, maybe a whistleblower, but often a news reporter – needs to dig in and find out what is really happening with our tax dollars. That's why it was so disgusting to read recently about our "Secretary of War's" crackdown on access by reporters to the Pentagon. Pete Hegseth, a former Fox News weekend host, is the U.S. Secretary of Defense. And it's his opin...
In 2000, state funding made up a third of the University of Nebraska's operating budget. Today, it has shrunk to 19%. Earlier this year, less-than-requested state funding led the NU Board of Regents to adopt $20 million in cuts across the university's five campuses. The University of Nebraska-Lincoln faces another $27.5 million in cuts to pull itself out of a yearslong structural deficit. NU Regents also approved an average 5% tuition increase on campuses to try to make up for the rising costs...
One morning after a night of one too many drinks, I gave in and passed my then 2-year-old daughter my phone to watch cartoons while I slept it off. When I woke up, Peppa Pig was nowhere to be found, but my kid had somehow managed to purchase a vintage Nebraska Territory map online. Well played, eBay one-click Buy It Now. The previous night, I had rabbit-holed into the world of Nebraska yesteryear - and I don't mean the Tom Osborne era. I was marveling at how big Nebraska used to be. Established...
"You should be allowed to say outrageous things." "There's ugly speech. There's gross speech. There's evil speech. And all of it is protected by the First Amendment." Both of the above quotes are attributable to Charlie Kirk, a political activist, media personality and evangelical Christian who was recently murdered, allegedly by a young man angered by Kirk's views on homosexuality and gender transitions. It was a sickening crime, witnessed by hundreds of students attending a Kirk event at a Uta...
Julie Montpetit didn't see it coming. Not her newfound passion for criminal justice reform, and certainly not her current predicament: blocked from talking to the man she loves, a man locked in prison thousands of miles away. Her husband, Nicholas Ely, is suing several employees in the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services, alleging that the department cut off their means of contact after Montpetit launched a podcast that aims to destigmatize relationships like theirs. She interviewed...
LINCOLN — In the past five years, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln has weathered $75 million in cuts. Cuts to staff. Cuts to university libraries. Cuts to colleges that have taught UNL students for more than a century. But the pain from those cuts, spread over years, likely will be dwarfed by what's to come, as the state’s flagship university moves to slash $27.5 million by the end of the calendar year. The total, announced by Chancellor Rodney Bennett in early August, represents nearly 6% of UNL’s state-aided budget. It exceeds the budge...
Michael's Cantina has been serving Tex-Mex food to the residents here for more than 30 years. It feels timeless, except for an unwelcome newcomer: the stench. For the past two years, the restaurant and nearby residents have been bothered by the stink, which owner Heath Henery describes as a "sewer smell with almost a vomit smell." He blames the odor on the dairy processing plant across the street, a company long known as Milk Specialties Global that recently rebranded as Actus Nutrition. The...
Editor's note: This story is about gambling and problem gambling. Nebraskans seeking help with problem gambling can call 1-833-BETOVER - 833-238-6837 - 24 hours a day. Mike Sciandra kept $300-$400 zippered inside a pouch in his leather backpack, ready for the moment he could take a break from his traveling sales job and walk into a Nebraska bar or convenience store. There, in Auburn, Aurora, Columbus, North Platte or York, he'd bet the maximum $4 per spin on a so-called "skill game," a legal...
MINDEN - Waylon Petersen wore a wary look as his family entered the white red-trimmed pavilion. But when the calliope music kicked on and Grandpa hoisted him on a race horse, the 2-year-old's lingering suspicion turned to joy. Over decades, similar scenes had unfolded countless times on the more than century-old carousel at the Harold Warp Pioneer Village, a 20-acre attraction packed with historical items in the heart of Nebraska. Then they stopped. Time and Mother Nature made the carousel -...
Austen Baack rediscovered his love of books while chopping fruits and vegetables at the back of a grocery store. As a young kid, Baack was a voracious reader. But that changed in his teens. "I was SparkNotes-ing everything," he recalled. "I hardly read anything in high school." Then, after graduation, Baack found himself working eight-hour shifts at Hy-Vee. He started listening to audio books to navigate the monotony of the job. "And that reignited my whole love for reading." He carried that...
In the hours after federal immigration officers descended on Glenn Valley Foods, company officials and elected leaders made one point clear: Glenn Valley had worked to avoid the exact situation it found itself in. As proof, they pointed to the Omaha meatpacking plant’s use of E-Verify, a federal system meant to help employers confirm a person’s ability to work legally in the U.S. “We’ve done everything we’re supposed to do as a company,” Glenn Valley Foods President Chad Hartmann said at the time. A spokesperson for Immigration and Customs Enf...
Over the past 25 years, Dollar General stores have become a fixture of the retail landscape in rural Nebraska. Now, there are 142 chain "dollar" stores - 115 of them Dollar Generals - in Nebraska towns with a population smaller than 10,000. OAKLAND - If you drive down U.S. Highway 77, you won't see the grocery store that has managed to keep afloat in this town for more than 100 years. It's five blocks off the highway, on Oakland's main drag. What you will see is a bright yellow sign, beckoning...
This will be Mandi Sedlak's fourth time competing in the U.S. Adaptive Open, one of the sport's major championships for physically and mentally impaired adults. In Mandi Sedlak's world, everything seems to fit. Even in her worst moments. It's true of her golf game, her husband, her career and the prosthetic leg connecting these threads. The Kearney native will be relying on the list's last item when she competes in the U.S. Adaptive Open at Woodmont Country Club in Maryland July 7-9. It will be...
The multimillion-dollar project, mostly paid for by Nebraska ratepayers, will feed the energy needs of Jigowatt, which already demands the most electricity of any customer in Stanton County. Justin Kennedy had long envisioned more than a cornfield when he gazed at the plot of family land a half-mile from where he grew up. It was "the perfect setup" for building his dream retirement house in rural Stanton County. He long ago planted a shelterbelt across the dirt road, hoping the trees would one...
In the sparsely populated Nebraska Panhandle, the City of Kimball is trying to grow. And thanks to investments from major local employers and the planned Air Force upgrade of missiles in nearby nuclear missile silos, the area soon could double in size. But to meet that growth, the city's water infrastructure needs attention - millions of dollars worth of attention: $2.5 million for sewer lines, around $1 million for updating the drinking water system and millions more for the wastewater treatmen...
The people waiting their turn to rappel down the 17-story Highline Apartments building had strict instructions: Don't come up to the roof until we come get you. Most of the group, assembled there for a fundraiser, seemed content to hang back in the designated waiting area half a flight of stairs below the roof, where they'd eventually step over the edge into the blue sky high above downtown Omaha. All but one person, actually. Sister Stephanie Matcha, age 81. The octogenarian nun who does her...
Garrett Shadbolt grew up watching his dad chase dreams of saddle bronc stardom, but never had much desire to chase it himself - an interesting admission from the Nebraska native and current No. 7 bareback rider in the world. "I remember going to a lot of rodeos when I was little, but watching him didn't make me want to get into it," he said. Now, Shadbolt is forming new traditions with his young family. And as the lone Nebraskan to make it to the National Finals Rodeo in the last four years, he...
The Advocate-Messenger earned 31 awards in the 2025 Better Newspaper Competition and ended in second place for the Allen & Linda Beerman Community Newspaper Sweepstakes Award, which includes weekly newspapers from all classes. The Stanton Register took top honors and the Aurora News-Register ended in third. SAM finished second in Division A, based on circulation and, in the digital sweepstakes division, SAM placed third. The paper picked nine first-place awards in categories, including building...
Molly Pofahl had big plans for the $370,000 in federal money awarded to the East Central District Health Department in March. They would use the money to provide cleanup for homes with high lead levels in Boone, Colfax, Nance and Platte counties, said Pofahl, the department’s chief public health officer. They could make it easier for people living in the district’s rural areas to get vaccinated. She planned to get training for her staff to better teach central Nebraskans about preventing infections. Lessons learned during COVID-19 informed the...
Melissa Harrell watched from the crowd as members of Nebraska's congressional delegation presented an oversized check for $1.3 million to her City of Wahoo colleagues. The federal grant would allow the city of 5,000 to replace two miles of century-old, leak-prone natural gas pipes. Sen. Deb Fischer, a Republican who voted for the bill that created the grant program, touted the award as proof that "real, bipartisan, and responsible infrastructure reform is possible." Less than a year later,...
Carolyn Fiscus knows where her aunt, Mildred Lowe, spent her final days. She knows the 12-year-old Winnebago girl became gravely ill in the winter of 1930 at the Genoa U.S. Indian Industrial Boarding School. She knows Mildred died. She does not know where her aunt was buried. It's a mystery Fiscus pondered as she sat in a folding chair beneath the sweltering sun in July 2023 and watched as a small team of archaeologists dug into the hardened Nebraska dirt. They were searching for the graves of...
