Mile Wide, Getting Deeper

This column was published May 30, 2025 in the Manhattan Mercury.

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The things you learn when you host a live daily radio talk show, which gets recorded and made available as a podcast.

ITEM: The tires fished out of the Kaw during the Little Apple cleanup day were actually put there decades ago with good intent, as riverbank stabilizers.

ITEM: There are two waiting lists at the Big Lakes Developmental Center. One for services for the intellectually and developmentally disabled, and another for funding to pay for them.

ITEM: A little more than six months in, private sector business leaders in Pott County say the new five-member county commission is operating at levels light years ahead of their preceding three.

ITEM: Manhattan is occupying some space in the psyches of the global digital arts community. The buzz about the Museum of Art and Light includes descriptors like “cutting edge” and “forefront.”

ITEM: The Caterpillar subsidiary that now intends to keep the Wamego shop up and running, may have pulled the rug out from under other firms close to committing to that manufacturing space. The spin? It’s a good problem to have and the pitch on the merits of the region will continue.

ITEM: Our community is approaching a demographic cliff over which K-State will fall. If it’s any consolation, we won’t be alone. KU and Wichita State will plummet with us, comparing notes on new enrollment strategies on the way down.

Like me, you may have been marginally familiar with one or more of these. I say marginally because we’re all a mile wide and an inch deep.   

The radio show/podcast is a news media vehicle designed to bring the art and science of the second thought, to foster critical thinking. I hosted a local author recently who has written a book on the subject. We talked about how one actually thinks critically. Thinking critically, about critical thinking. It was like an hour in a hall of mirrors. 

The show has rapidly become a journalism-delivering vehicle where guests can plant seeds, drop hints, test narratives, move agendas, raise awareness, and otherwise seek to influence hearts and minds.

Riley County Police Department Director Brian Peete came on three hours before he was to sit down with those to whom he answers, the Law Board, and propose a $30-million budget.  

K-State Athletic Director Gene Taylor alluded to retirement, saying he’s “on the back nine” of his career, but unsure “whether it’s the 15th or 18th hole.”

We’ve also hosted what seems like a revolving door of leaders of systems and organizations that stand to be impacted by fewer federal funds. The range of emotions trends toward the negative. Anger, indignation, frustration, helplessness. A couple of them recognize the game has changed and are rolling up their sleeves and moving on to innovation and new ideas.     

This is a local election year. This summer and fall, I will be purposeful about inviting each of those with the courage and fortitude to ask for your vote for the Manhattan City Commission and the USD 383 school board. The radio show/podcast is ideally suited for those sorts of dialogues, and the reality is it may be your only chance to hear them.

Each day as I introduce the show, I describe myself as a former broadcast journalist, “recovering” political operative and lobbyist, bringing a “career’s worth of  journalistic instincts.” The other day, my wife mentioned she hadn’t seen me this happy to go to work since I was the governor’s press secretary. And that was thirty years ago.

That says something about the depth of joy I derived in the thirty years since, but it says even more about those journalistic instincts. If you interpret this column as a thinly-disguised effort to encourage you to listen to the show, then I can declare victory and depart the field.

It’s not thin. It’s a mile wide and getting deeper every day.

Mike Matson’s column appears every other weekend in The Mercury, and he hosts ‘Within Reason,’ weekdays at 9 a.m. on NewsRadio KMAN. Follow his writings at mikematson.com