Summary
The Flatwater Free Press, Nebraska’s first independent, non-profit newsroom hosted a sold-out community event in Bennington on Sept. 14. The inaugural Flatwater Festival featured a panel of journalists with roots in Nebraska followed by food, drinks and community conversation.
For Jim Boucher and Linda Edwards, it was date night. For Deborah Bunting, it was a chance to see her daughter. And for Matthew Hansen, it was a “dream come true.”
The Flatwater Free Press, Nebraska’s first independent, non-profit newsroom hosted a sold-out community event in Bennington on Sept. 14. The inaugural Flatwater Festival featured a panel of journalists with roots in Nebraska followed by food, drinks and community conversation.
Since its launch in the fall of 2021, the Flatwater Free Press has published 233 articles covering various issues across the state of Nebraska. In its first full year of publication, the Flatwater Free Press won three Great Plains Journalism Awards and journalist Yanqi Xu won the INN Nonpofit News Award for a series on Nebraska water quality. Following her reporting, four water quality bills were introduced in the Nebraska Legislature.
“I cannot think of any better way to celebrate that than by being here in a barn in Bennington on a perfect September day with all of you,” said Matt Wynn, executive director of Nebraska Journalism Trust and the Flatwater Free Press.
More than 350 people attended the Flatwater Festival, including Erin Schulte Collier, senior editor at Inside Climate.
“I literally flew in just for this,” said Schulte Collier, who went to school at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln with Jeff Zeleny.
Schulte Collier and Zeleny first met during his tenure as editor-in-chief of the Daily Nebraskan from 1994 to 1995.
“Jeff was like, ‘Hi, I’m Jeff Zeleny, and I’m going to cover the White House someday,’” Schulte Collier said.
Zeleny, originally from Exeter, now serves as CNN’s chief national affairs correspondent and returned to Nebraska to speak at the festival alongside Dionne Searcey with the New York Times and LaSharah Bunting with The Online News Association. All three are University of Nebraska-Lincoln alumni.
“The impact of the Flatwater Free Press is already clear in its first year,” Zeleny said. “I was happy to come back and see what they [the Flatwater Free Press] had built.”
The panel discussed topics relating to artificial intelligence, international reporting and political polarization. They also reflected on how their experience growing up in Nebraska formed their perspectives as journalists, particularly when reporting at the national level.
“The most success I ever had in journalism was when I really tried to pump up my Nebraskaness,” said Dionne Searcey, a journalist at The New York Times. “We’re all shaped by where we grew up.”
Some Nebraskans are also shaped by how they grew up.
Festival guests Jim Boucher of Valley and Linda Edwards of Waterloo remember growing up with weekly print newspapers and are concerned about the decline of quality journalism in Nebraska as layoffs continue to happen.
“[The] question is about the life and death of journalism. That’s really what this is all about. And that’s why we buy subscriptions,” said Boucher, an 82-year-old retired engineer.
“We are both concerned about good journalism,” said Edwards, who bought two tickets at $125 each to attend the event. Edwards described the investment as a sign of her support for the Flatwater Free Press.
“I’m so delighted to see that other people present are interested in the preservation of press freedom and journalism,” Boucher said. “You can’t not celebrate the birth of a new free press.”
Deborah Bunting’s reason for celebration went beyond the success of the Flatwater Free Press, it was a chance to see her daughter LaSharah Bunting, one of the three panelists at the event and the CEO and executive editor of the Online New Association.
“For me, it was a day of pride because there’s an awful lot of young Black girls who don’t think of themselves as being citizens of the world,” Bunting said. “I’m so proud to be here because I know how hard LaSharah worked for this.”
Bunting said the event was affirming.
“It lets me know that real journalism is loved and appreciated,” she said.
The Flatwater Free Press differs from other news outlets in the state in that its existence depends on donations, sponsors, and grants. Recent budget reports show that funds and donations have been greater than what the newsroom anticipated, proving Nebraska’s interest in the non-profit news model.
In a newsletter sent a day after the festival, Hansen said, “This dream is working. It’s working because you recognize the value of the Flatwater Free Press, of nonprofit journalism, of good ol’ fashioned good journalism itself.”
Correction: An earlier version of this article claimed that the Flatwater Free Press won five Great Plains Journalism Awards. They won three, two were finalists. The official name of the award Yanqi Xu won for a series on Nebraska water quality is the INN Nonprofit News Award. These corrections were made on 9/20/23.
