I remember two bronze plaques in an Emporia park, each cast with the anguished writing of a father recounting the death of his 16-year-old daughter. I was only 8 years old, but the words of William Allen White in Emporia’s Peter Pan Park left a permanent impression.

I didn’t understand what a newspaper editor or columnist did back then, but I surely knew White was important. A bronze bust of the Emporia Gazette editor and publisher watches over the park from between those bronze plaques, after all.

My family only lived in Emporia a year, nearly four decades ago now, but I never forgot how one man captured a profound event of his life with indelible words. Those plaques, I’ve come to believe, represent the beginning of my lifelong fascination with commentary writing and opinion journalists. I became a writer and editor myself, and now my book on the topic has arrived in bookstores.

That fascination didn’t stop with William Allen White. When my family moved to El Dorado in the early 1990s, I frequently heard stories about longtime El Dorado Times editor Rolla Clymer. His name adorns a room at the library, a local pond and a property development. His collection of editorials about the sweeping Flint Hills landscape could be purchased across town.

In the early 2000s, I attended the University of Kansas (and the William Allen White journalism school) in Lawrence. It didn’t seem peculiar to watch Lawrence Journal-World editor and publisher Dolph Simons Jr. write weekly columns that enraged or amused locals. This was what Kansas newspaper editors were supposed to do, I reasoned.

By that time I had decided to make journalism my career, and that fact seemed self-explanatory that no one needed to voice it. The history of Kansas and its towns was defined by opinion writers and commentators, those men and women who wrote about daily life in the pages of community newspapers.

Since then, journalism has gone through tumultuous shifts. Newspapers have shrunken or closed, and local opinion writing has all but vanished from the number that remain.

Figures like White and Clymer and Simons were not just flashes in the pan. They worked for decades. They strengthened their cities and built bonds with residents. While they were not perfect — none would have claimed to be — they provided an essential civic good.

They helped Kansas know itself.

I’ve written a book that’s coming out Tuesday called “Opinionated: Kansas Journalists Who Proved Why Commentary Matters — Then and Now.” It’s published by the good folks of the University Press of Kansas.

My book isn’t just about old white men. It’s about old women, too — including the indomitable Mamie Boyd, who worked and wrote through her 97th birthday in 1973. It’s about legendary Black journalists like Lucile Bluford of Kansas City and Hollie T. Simms of Wichita.

It’s about Soviet-curious socialists like Emanuel Haldeman-Julius of Girard, whose Little Blue Books spread the classics to teenagers of America. And it’s about homemakers like Lindsborg’s Donna Burough Opat, who raised nine children while writing a column for the Salina Journal.

These people told the stories of Kansas. These people were Kansas. There was little distinction between their words and the lives they lived. For those of us devoted to local journalism, that has always been the case.

Recently, opinion writing has come to mean something else. It’s come to mean something more partisan and performative, more focused on horse races than hometowns.

As local journalism struggled, local opinion pages withered or disappeared. At the same time, a national political entertainment complex developed, treating deeply held personal beliefs as fodder for ratings. That approach trickled back down to the local level, where commentary began to be seen as destructively divisive.

For anyone who has followed the travails of local news media, this should sound familiar.

What I couldn’t forget or overlook is how popular opinion writing remains among readers. Americans may have a dim view of national talking heads, but they gobble up opinion pieces like a hungry teenager devouring chicken nuggets.

National newspapers like the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post maintain expensive editorial page staffs. Magazines including the Atlantic and Harper’s commission lengthy think pieces about current affairs. Meanwhile, digital platforms such as Substack attract millions of readers for opinionated posts.

In my five years at Kansas Reflector, I’ve seen it happen repeatedly. During our legislative session, from January through March, news stories predictably attract the most readers. But for the rest of the year, columns and opinion pieces from a diverse assortment of Kansans frequently take the top-read spot at our website.

People enjoy reading local opinion — yes, even if they disagree with it.

My favorite comment from readers? “I like your column, but I don’t agree with everything you write.”

That’s the whole point of writing opinion and running an opinion section, in White’s day or the present. Serious opinion journalists devote their careers to making people examine their preconceptions and engage in a dialogue about the future of their communities.

In the words of Iola Register editor and publisher Angelo Scott, whose 1958 speech on this subject help inspire my book:

Clay Wirestone is Kansas Reflector opinion editor. His first book, “Opinionated: Kansas Journalists Who Proved Why Commentary Matters — Then and Now,” comes out Sept. 29 from the University Press of Kansas. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.

We are rewatching The Good Place, a sitcom that ran during the first Trump administration, this time with our tweens. It’s a show about moral philsophy and what it means to be a good person, but it’s also a show about the absurdity of quantification and scoring systems.

It’s made me want to re-read my notes from C. Thi Nguyen’s The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else’s Game, show creator Michael Schur’s book, How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question, and maybe Dante’s Inferno and Milton’s Paradise Lost.

[Spoiler alert] The other thing the show is about is the unique Hell of thinking you’re in The Good Place when you’re really in The Bad Place.

I see this a lot in life, but I see it all the time on social media.

Pretty much all social media is The Bad Place, but some social media thinks it’s The Good Place, and that somehow makes it even worse.

For example: Bluesky — literally blue sky, a.k.a. the heavens — thinks of itself as The Good Place, an alternative to The Bad Place (a.k.a Twitter/X). But it’s still a place where people torture each other — mostly by preaching to the choir and/or boring each other into submission. It’s not, IMO, what I’d call fun. (At least in the microdoses I’ve experienced. As with all social media, the dosage is the poison.)

Meanwhile, whenever I pop into The Bad Place, it’s like everybody has accepted it’s The Bad Place and has carried on. But despite its toxic chaos, it’s still sort of… well, I won’t say fun, but it’s not boring.

I consider Threads the worst site on the internet, by the way: absolutely algorithmically tuned to your worst anxieties and fears. A complete hellscape that I only get sucked into via the other Meta hellscape known as Instagram. (Instagram invites you into a Good Place of pretty pictures that torture you with the thoughts that everyone else is prettier, more creative, and having a better time than you are.)

Facebook has been bad from the beginning, and it remains the number one great place to find out that the people you know and/or love have terrible, terrible ideas. (I only experience its feed when I want to see new owl photos uploaded to my Central Texas Screech Owls group or a new event that the teen film club in our city hosts.)

NextDoor is the place to feel shittier about your neighborhood.

Etc.

It’s all The Bad Place.

TOPEKA — Lawyers for a Kansas Republican U.S. senator running for reelection sent his opponent a cease-and-desist letter demanding the Democrat stop airing an ad featuring one of the senator’s former patients.

The lawyers for U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kansas, said in a Monday letter that the Rev. Adam Hamilton’s campaign had published and distributed ads about Marshall’s medical debt collection practices that were “defamatory.”

The ad begins with Meischa Zimmerman, who said she was arrested while eight months pregnant for missing a $50 payment to Marshall. She was paying roughly $50 a month to account for 18% interest on nearly $3,600 in total debt, according to court records. 

The woman was one of more than 700 patients who Marshall sued while a practicing physician in Great Bend, according to reporting by the New York Times. 

“The unmistakable message to a reasonable viewer is that Senator Marshall caused a pregnant patient to be arrested and jailed for missing a single $50 payment. That message is false in every material respect,” the letter said.

The Hamilton campaign’s ad had been viewed more than one million times on X.

Heartland Regional OBGYN, where Marshall worked, opened a case against the woman in December 2009, according to court documents. Zimmerman was first arrested in 2011. She said in the Hamilton campaign ad that she was handcuffed while pregnant in front of her 2-year-old daughter.

Marshall’s lawyers took issue with three facets of the ad. They said Zimmerman wasn’t arrested for a missed payment but, instead, for failing to appear in court. They said the campaign ad frames the premise of the arrest on a $50 bill rather than the sum of Zimmerman’s debts. They said the arrest wasn’t a surprise, arguing that court records show Zimmerman “was called to court in three different counties by eight different businesses over a multi-year period, including by a different hospital and in an eviction proceeding.”

Zimmerman said in the ad: “Roger Marshall preyed on the low-income families of Kansas.” 

The letter demanded the Hamilton campaign within 24 hours remove the ad, issue a formal retraction and apology and cease further republication or promotion of false claims.

“Falsely accusing a physician of having a pregnant patient arrested over a $50 bill strikes directly at Senator Marshall’s professional integrity as a physician and his fitness for public office, and it has been broadcast to thousands of Kansas voters in the final weeks of an election,” the cease-and-desist letter said.

As of Monday afternoon, the campaign had neither issued an apology nor removed the ad from social media.

Hamilton’s campaign, Hamilton for Kansas, spent at least $7,500 to play the ad to YouTube users between 165,000 and 280,000 times from Friday to Monday, according to Google ad tracking. 

Tyson Brody, a spokesperson for the campaign, said that “not once” did Marshall dispute Meischa’s story “that his lawyers had her arrested in front of her children.” 

“The lies in his letter are blatant and reek of desperation,” Brody said. “The truth is what Roger Marshall did is extreme and hurt Kansans. Voters should know the truth about who their senator is and what he’s done.”

Marshall said in an Instagram post: “This ad is a complete lie and multiple organizations have called for the ad to be pulled from TV.”

Samantha Cantrell, regional press secretary for the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, issued a statement calling the ad a “manufactured hit piece by Hamilton and national Democrats” and called for it to be taken down.

“Adam Hamilton knows a Democrat has not won a Senate seat in Kansas in nearly 100 years, so he is deliberately lying about Roger Marshall to deceive voters,” Cantrell said.

The cease-and-desist letter is the latest friction in an increasingly contentious U.S. Senate campaign between the former OB-GYN and the Kansas City-area pastor. What once appeared to national forecasters as a safe Republican win has veered closer into toss-up territory as Hamilton has fundraised and campaigned across the state since winning a crowded Democratic primary in August. 

Hamilton has billed himself as the candidate in the middle, attempting to appeal to moderate Republicans and Democrats and undecided voters while Marshall has leaned into his connections to President Donald Trump’s base.

The two faced a predominantly pro-Hamilton crowd at a state fair debate earlier this month and are set to take the stage together again Oct. 21 on FOX4 in a debate hosted by John Holt. 

I didn’t know Beehiiv had a program to support independent journalists. Members get access to tools, a health insurance stipend, legal protection, and waived hosting fees. Oh, and they don’t proudly host Nazis like Substack. ✌️

According to our sources, Ketchup Entertainment is expected to release their live-action/animated adventure COYOTE VS. ACME on VOD and digital platforms later this month, arriving on September 29th, 2026. The film launched in US theaters on August 28th, 2026. Please note: Ketchup Entertainment has neither announced nor confirmed the release date. As always, release dates...

Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach's reelection campaign is facing an ethics complaint over more than $10,000 in contributions that allegedly exceeded state limits. The complaint focuses on donations associated with Kansas car dealer Steve Noller and Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy, as well as a later amended campaign report that reassigned some of the money to relatives of the original donors.

End Citizens United alleges Kobach accepted excessive contributions from Ruddy and Noller, according to The Kansas City Star. Kansas law allows individuals to give $4,000 for a primary and $4,000 for a general election, or $8,000 in total, the Star reported. Noller reported giving Kobach $16,656.26 in two contributions made June 28, while Ruddy reported donating $10,000 in two contributions made May 5.

The campaign later amended its report to attribute part of each donor's reported giving to a relative, according to the Star. One of Noller's two $8,328.13 donations was reclassified as coming from Virginia Noller, who is listed with a West Palm Beach address. A separate $2,000 check originally attributed to Ruddy was reclassified to Sonja Ruddy, who shares that Florida address with him; the campaign continued to attribute an $8,000 May 5 contribution to Ruddy.

Watchdog Demands State Investigation

End Citizens United is asking the Kansas Public Disclosure Commission to examine whether the amended attributions resolve or instead compound the alleged violations. In a letter from president Tiffany Muller to commission president Anne Spiess, the group said Kobach's filings appear to show either repeated campaign-finance violations or inaccurate reporting and requested an investigation.

What Kansas's contribution limit is

For the 2025-2026 election cycle, the contribution limit for statewide offices is $4,000 for each primary election and the same amount for each general election. According to the Kansas Secretary of State's 2025 Session Laws, the limit was increased from $2,000 to $4,000 for each primary election. The change permits an individual to contribute up to $8,000 across a primary and general election.

Beyond the Ruddy and Noller donations, the complaint asks regulators to examine a $2,500 contribution the campaign accepted from the law firm Cozens O'Conner during the legislative session, which End Citizens United alleges violated a ban on donations from lobbyists, political committees or corporations during that window. The group also wants the commission to investigate two $4,000 donations made on the same day by an individual and a business sharing the same address, along with what it describes as missing nonmonetary contributions in Kobach's reports and the absence of a required last-minute contribution filing.

Muted Responses on Both Sides

Kobach's campaign did not respond to repeated requests for comment, and the Ruddys did not respond through a Newsmax spokesperson, according to the Star. Noller said he could not immediately confirm whether his records matched the campaign's accounting. Kansas Public Disclosure Commission general counsel Candice Wilson said the commission does not comment on investigations or complaints until permitted by law and said her statement should not be construed as confirming or denying an active complaint.

This is not the first time Kobach's campaign finances have drawn regulatory attention. In 2011, the Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission fined him $5,000 after finding he had inaccurately reported more than $75,000 in contributions and expenditures during the 2010 election. More recently, in 2022, the Federal Election Commission found that Kobach's 2020 Senate campaign had accepted an illegal in-kind corporate contribution from We Build the Wall, the border-wall fundraising group that took in more than $25 million, and had failed to report it. That finding stemmed in part from Kobach sending emails to roughly 295,000 We Build the Wall donors soliciting Senate campaign contributions, and it resulted in a $30,000 civil penalty shared between his campaign and the organization.

A Rematch With Money on the Line

Kobach, who has also run for Kansas secretary of state, governor and U.S. Senate over the course of his political career, is seeking reelection as attorney general as a Republican against Democrat Chris Mann, an attorney from Lawrence. The two faced off once before, with Kobach defeating Mann by just 1.6% in their 2022 matchup, according to the Star's reporting.

Mann's campaign has seized on the new complaint. Spokesperson Leah Rymer said Kobach has no excuse for not knowing or following campaign-finance rules. The rematch is also shaping up to be a financial mismatch this time around, with Mann having raised nearly $600,000 more than Kobach since January.