Nonprofit newsroom covering Nebraska statehouse and rural issues has launched, with top reporter Paul Hammel

Paul Hammel

The Nebraska Examiner, a digital nonprofit newsroom focused on statehouse coverage, launched last week with a formidable reporting team that includes Paul Hammel, previously the Omaha World-Herald's top rural reporter. World-Herald veterans make up the rest of the team, including editor Cate Folsom and reporters Cindy Gonzalez and Aaron Sanderford.

The Examiner is the 26th statehouse newsroom affiliated with the States Newsroom, a nonprofit project that has sought to increase such reporting since its inception in 2019. The project is noteworthy because statehouse coverage has been in decline for years, with only 30 percent of newspapers assigning anyone to cover the beat. Report for America has also tried to shore up statehouse reporting, funding reporters for that beat in 14 states in 2019 and more since.

The Examiner covers statewide news—including rural concerns—in addition to statehouse matters, as Hammel's coverage already shows. It is meant to supplement other papers' coverage at a time when newsroom coverage is stretched ever-thinner. Because the newsroom is funded entirely through grants and donations, its content is "free of ads, paywalls and paid subscriptions," Folsom writes in a welcome letter. "Newspapers and broadcast stations across the state (and elsewhere) are welcome to enhance their own report by republishing our articles, free of charge, with proper attribution."