The Second Thought

Mike Matson

Keynote remarks

Kansas Press Association annual convention

Salina, Kansas

June 6, 2025

Showed these remarks to a friend I trust. "You buried the lede." So I reworked it and will share the lede with you now... and later… at the place I buried it.

Over the course of my life in Kansas… through all my personal and professional experience... I have come to believe the key to today’s societal ills are members of society who think longer, deeper, and more critically.

Journalism is the one constant in our world to allow that.

When I saw one of the early blurbs Emily had worked up to promote my appearance… the word that caught my eye was “inspirational.”

I have never really thought of myself as an “inspirational speaker,” in fact the most accurate description of me comes from a long-time friend who knows me well… “refreshingly cynical.”

So, as with everything we do in this business, upon completion of my assigned role here today… I will leave it to your best judgement to determine where I fit in the Venn diagram that includes inspiration…  and cynicism.

I’m going to start by talking about myself. My wife would tell you it’s self-serving… “Count the number of times you say ‘I,’” she would say, and edit. “Then edit again.”

But I believe strongly that context is important… especially because the whole idea for speeches like these… is for the audience to gain new thoughts and insights… and if I’m the one called upon to provide the thoughts and insights… value will be added to your thoughts and insights… if you have a better sense of what motivates my…  thoughts and insights.    

I have entered the phase of life I laughingly refer to as “semi-retirement…” and as we go along, I’ll give you a sense of why another key interpretation of “semi-retirement” may be “self-delusion.”

But also how it has brought full circle, a Kansas-centric career…  and how what I’m doing now arguably… brings more relevance than anything that came before it.

Not because of what I’m doing… but because of the times in which I am doing it. 

Lifelong Kansan…   born in Manhattan, where my father was earning a degree in agronomy from the land grant during what he would come to describe as “the Bob Boozer era.”

After he graduated, we returned to the family farm on my mother’s side…  in Rooks County… north of the Saline River. My father was not born into farming, so he did not have any of the innate, emotional attachment to the culture that surrounded him… and tended to view it not as a way of life… but simply as a way to earn a living.

My father grew up all over the American west… both his parents were addicts and alcoholics… so he endured a less-than-idyllic childhood. Given this upbringing, my father sought security…  especially economic security… and struggled with the debt that goes hand in hand with farming.

He preferred a steady paycheck, so they sold the farm, which financed a graduate degree in education from Fort Hays… and we moved to Wichita… where the old man taught high school physics and chemistry for the next thirty years.

A steady paycheck. Every two weeks.

Wichita’s my hometown… it’s where I grew up. I’m a proud graduate of Wichita Heights. Went to high school with Darnell Valentine. At Heights… Darnell was a better basketball player than me…  but I was a better yearbook photographer… than him!

Wichita is where I came of age, and as a teenager and young adult crafted a life driven by the three interchangeable priorities of young men on the move:

Cars, girls…  and beer.

Experimented with other chemicals, some of which would find their way onto the controlled substance list…  which would lead to my own challenges with addiction. I’ve written a couple of books about all this… and I have no intention of using this platform to pimp the books… other than to say two things:

The first is…  mikematson-dot-com…

… and the second… is to say that much of the way I think about and interact with the world has been informed by my genetic predisposition to… and my subsequent recovery from addiction.

There’s an ‘old school’ poster you will still see, on occasion, in 12-step recovery circles. There are three words on this poster…

“Think…  think…  think.”

Addicts tend to be impulsive… we tend to act on the first thought… very often with negative consequences.

So, the reason behind the poster is… think (one finger)… have the first thought. Think about the first thought… because when you’re in the throes of addiction, you tend not to.  

Think (two fingers). Have the second thought… about the first thought. Can it be better? Is it the right thing to do?

And Think (three fingers). The third thought… the implication is clear:

More thought…  is better.

It helps those of us in recovery from addiction better understand the danger of impulsive thoughts and the actions that stem from them.

This concept also applies to those who consume your work product. More on that… still to come… as we say in the live radio talk show biz.   

After graduating from Heights… 50 years ago this spring… reunion coming up this fall. We had a 40-year reunion ten years ago. I didn’t go, but they posted photos online. I asked my wife, “I don’t look that old, do I?”

“Only when you go to bed at 9 o’clock.” 

After Heights, college was the expectation…  from society… and especially from my economic security-driven father… but my thought was… what’s the hurry?

I wanted to spend what today would be called a gap year… or in my case… gap couple of years… earning money and chasing down those three interchangeable priorities.   

At age 20… those priorities led me to Minneapolis and a broadcasting technical school. The truth is, I had fallen madly in love with a girl from the Twin Cities, who was in Wichita for the summer visiting extended family and I followed her north.

I didn’t know it then, but the girl and tech school were intertwined. I was beginning to develop a life skill of balancing competing values.

It was a perfect storm of ambition, wanderlust and romance.

Nine months in, the girl would throw me over for a Stallone wannabe. “Stay away from her or you won’t have any teeth to broadcast with.”

Okay Rocky, you win.

Tail between my legs, I would retreat home to Kansas to lick my wounds and launch a career.   

Landed a job back home in Wichita running “master control” for overnight movies at KAKE TV. That led to a job as a deejay at what was then KAKE radio… and this notion of career ambition was beginning to surface.

Part of the overnight master control duties included ripping some wire copy, recording it… and airing it between movies.

So, between Fred McMurray getting swindled by Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity and Bette Davis, dying from an inoperable brain tumor, falling for her doctor, played by George Brent in Dark Victory, insomniacs throughout the Great Plains would hear the dulcet tones of Mike Matson… spouting the latest on the Iran hostage crisis and stirrings of Eastern European freedom through a labor union in Poland.

I’m starting to think like my father now…  and I thought…  Journalism!

If I can read the news, surely, I can write it.

I grabbed myself by the seat of the pants, marched myself into the office of the KAKE Radio news director… and said, in essence…     

Any openings for bright young eager Kansas broadcaster? Look no further!

If I could pronounce Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, Sadegh Ghotbzadeh, and Wojciech Jaruzelski, then Wabaunsee…  Arkansas…  and Marais des Cygne… would be a breeze.

The answer was clear… and resounding.

No.

To work in radio news in a market the size of Wichita at that time… required actual radio news experience. Journalism, not just pronunciation.

So, it was on to Hays, Kansas… and four years of on the job training… learning the basics of an industry at a combination radio/TV station. Four of us did it all.

Here’s how green I was. My first assignment was to cover a meeting of the Hays School Board. Walk in. Pick up a hard copy agenda. Introduce myself to people who look like they’re in charge. Someone says, “you sit over there.” Table with two chairs. Me and a reporter from the Hays Daily News. 

I’m watching what he’s doing. Taking copious notes from every item on the agenda, go back to the station, write a news story describing every action taken, in chronological order, from the top of the agenda to the bottom. It was a page long.

I caught on quickly. The Hays Daily News reporter would hang around after the meeting, talk to the school board members, the superintendent. He was actually, like, writing down, the responses to his questions.

Four years later… back to Wichita as an anchor/reporter for a statewide radio news network… owned at the time by a Wichita-based firm that had made its millions in the oilfield supply game.

As broadcasters, I would quickly learn… the oil field supply boys were really good oil field suppliers...

When a white knight in the form of a family-owned media juggernaut out of Topeka came sniffing around the radio networks, the oil field suppliers jumped at the offer.

Stauffer Communications owned the Topeka Capital-Journal, WIBW-TV, an FM station, and WIBW 580-AM, arguably the most important and influential radio station in Kansas.

Managed the journalism for the statewide radio news network and the flagship station for a few years… then slid over to the TV side and became Statehouse reporter for WIBW-TV.

Quick story from those years. My job was to fill a 2-minute hole in the 6 o’clock news, every night. This meant enterprising a story, every day.

One day, I’m chasing two stories. Get a tip from a source that Bob Stephan, the sitting Attorney General, was to be indicted that day on federal perjury charges, stemming from a sexual harassment suit in which he was involved.

At the exact same time back at the Statehouse… a cabal of conservative House Republicans are plotting a coup to topple the moderate Republican Speaker of the House.

I’m chasing both stories… and it’s getting late. I’m the lead story out of the first commercial break. The producer needs me to write a tease for the anchor…

“The Attorney General was not indicted… and the Speaker of the House was not ousted. We’ll be back with more stuff that didn’t happen…   right after this.”

That work exposed me to politics at a deep and meaningful level… and I had an interest… so when Kansas Secretary of State Bill Graves asked if I would be willing to walk away from a successful, stable career in journalism… working for what was arguably the glossiest family-owned media system in Kansas… for something as “iffy” as a political campaign, there was only one answer.

Yes.

Served as the Governor’s press secretary, message-meister, speechwriter… gatekeeper for reporters, editors, publishers. The fact that I used to be one made it easier.

Last story… one of our tactics was to be friendly to the beat reporters… but to bend over backwards to the opinion page writers. At the time, Randy Brown was the Wichita Eagle editorial page editor… largest newspaper in Kansas.

In my world, this guy’s a whale.

We lay it on thick.. lunch at Cedar Crest. “Governor will be here very shortly…  please make yourself at home…  allow me to introduce you to the First Lady… she really admires your work…” We’re only a month or two in office. Randy asks the governor his impression of the Kansas legislature.

Graves leans back thoughtfully... places knife and fork at four o’clock on his plate, and says... “You know, the legislature’s a lot like any gathering of 165 human beings. There are some brilliant people there… and then you got your idiots.”

My eyes get wide, Randy’s scribbling furiously… Graves immediately realizes his faux pas… and without missing a beat, says… “of course, your governor is not without his shortcomings.”

In Kansas, governors can serve two terms… so after Graves was re-elected in 1998… those of us on the senior staff started looking for work.

I land back in Manhattan, managing policy communications, strategic planning and philanthropy for Kansas Farm Bureau. Was also on the ground floor of a couple of startups… marketing and outreach for the Kansas Leadership Center… helped launch the digital media startup Kansas City/Wichita Beacon… start thinking about retirement… or at least “semi-retirement.”

Along the way… in 2018… I begin a side hustle with Ned Seaton, publisher of the Manhattan Mercury. I’m writing a blog, which I post on social media. Ned calls me up, “Hey, I really like your blog, how’d you like to write a column for the Merc?”

I’m thinking… he came to me… what do I charge him? Can I get rich? Can I semi-retire on this twice-monthly column?

I call a couple some friends in the biz… my last call… to Colleen McCain Nelson, who covered Graves for the Eagle… she grew up right here in Salina… went on to win a Pulitzer writing editorials in Dallas. I think today she’s executive editor of the Sacramento Bee.  

“Hey, Ned wants me to write a column for him. How much should I charge him?”

When she didn’t quit laughing, I had my answer. So, when Ned offered me 40-bucks a pop, I said…

Yes.      

If you know Ned, you know he is hard-wired to the family journalism legacy. And he’d be the first to admit… that his industry was slow to react to this (hold up smart phone).

About a year and half ago… in a conversation… he said, “I inherited a lot of things from my father… including a gracefully-aging bookkeeper, who is six months behind.”

You see where this is going…  bookkeeper catches up. A slowly descending revenue trend line for the Merc plummets.

Ned swings into action. He calls it triage. Gotta save the ship. Makes some crucial business decisions.

Slims down his paper to eight pages, cuts loose Associated Press… and…  gets serious about an idea that had long lingered… but was never acted on… because there was no incentive:

Combine the family-owned newspaper with the family-owned radio stations. For decades, the Seaton family has also owned Manhattan Broadcasting Company, which is made up of KMAN-AM and four FM stations.

Ned says “I know precious little about broadcasting. Help me out.”

So together, we sit down and set about combining a newspaper and five radio stations. We create one newsroom… one revenue generating shop… all manner of operational efficiencies.

Move all the bodies to the broadcasting center because there’s more room. Keep the press downtown at the Merc because you don’t just throw that in the back of a pickup and haul it across town before lunch. 

The work is human resource-centric, and the hardest part has not been the operations… it’s combining two cultures that ostensibly produce the same product – information… but go about it in vastly disparate ways.

In the middle all this work comes the question. “OK, Matson, given your career… why don’t you design and host a radio talk show that we can sell?

The lightbulb flashes in my mind… this is not only my passion and where I started my career… it’s the glidepath to semi-retirement… I can knock this out in 15-20 hours a week… so, I say…

Yes.

…and purposefully walk away from fulltime day job work for the first time in 40 years.

The goal is two-fold… and one of them gets directly to the essence of a time-honored business model in journalism. Create a compelling product that people want…   and sell it. 

What’s the hook?

Let’s tap into the current narrative we hear all around us… the existing angst… the elevated anxiety. Not by adding to it, but by suggesting a way to deal with it.

The second thought.

Think…  think… think.

We didn’t invent this idea. Early addiction recovery champions didn’t come up with it. You can trace this back to Plato and Socrates. 

We called the show, ‘Within Reason.’ To give you a sense of the show, here are the four liners we use in promos and ads:

“Digging deeper into community conversations.”

“Cultivating critical thinking.”

“Encouraging the second thought.”

“A career’s worth of journalistic instincts.”

We invite one guest a day… one topic… we dive into regional community conversations, business and societal trends, policy ideas from every level of government, with a particular emphasis on reason and common sense.

Not rocket science, not re-inventing the wheel… we’re using the wheel exactly for what it was designed. It’s the essence of journalism.

Our other goal… just as important… monetize it.

Sat down and brainstormed. Who would have interest in advertising on a vehicle like this?

Big systems with community service baked into their ethos and mission… and more importantly… their marketing budget..  utilities…  health care… big construction firms… financial institutions.

We started with Stormont Vail Health… brand new campus in Manhattan, just took over a hospital in Junction City…   sat down with my friend Mary Martell… Stormont Vail’s exec in charge in Manhattan.

“Love it. Go talk to the c-suite in Topeka… I’ll tell them you’re coming and put in a good word for you.”

Here’s an example of the small world… and the ancillary benefit of a career’s worth of relationships. Anita Fry is the exec in charge of marketing for Stormont Vail. When I was a reporter covering politics and government for WIBW-TV in Topeka, she was a business reporter for the Topeka Capital-Journal.

We weren’t friends, but we knew each other professionally and had a level of mutual respect. Also both alums of Stauffer Communications. 

Next stop, McCownGordon Construction… started with my friend Brian Fuemmeler… executive in charge of their Manhattan shop.

“Love it. Go talk to the c-suite in Kansas City… I’ll tell them you’re coming and put in a good word for you.” 

Third stop. The Trust Company… local family-owned wealth management firm in Manhattan… sat down with the individual atop their org chart, my friend Mark Knackendoffel…

I’m about three sentences into my pitch, and Mark holds up his hand, and says:

“Love it. I’m also trying to semi-retire. Go talk to my daughter.”    

The answer from all three… was…

Yes.

Why? What’s the postmortem debrief that brought new revenue?

Why did all three… the first three we identified and the first three we pitched… say yes?

Could it be… they see what I see?

An audience longing for meaningful dialogue rooted in journalistic instincts? And that by connecting their good name to a news media vehicle designed specifically to provide that… that the public perception of their health care system… their construction company… their wealth management firm, gets a little shinier?  

Again, not brain surgery. Advertising 101.

Could it be… they see an evolving societal landscape in our country, state and region and see this as a non-threatening way to push back?

++

Years ago, as a young adult and later as a political reporter, I started to ponder whether we, as American society, spend entirely too much time and energy focused on one office – one individual.

I suspect it’s wrapped up in my generation’s experience with Watergate and how the country reacted to that seemingly singular focus on one President.

Maybe because I’m a recovering political operative, I thought 2016 was a fluke. Trump didn’t win as much as Hillary lost by ignoring crucial swing states. His appeal seemed narrow, and more data to bolster that argument surfaced in every election since. Until last year.

My thinking evolved a little in 2020 about how those I thought were get along, go along, common sense pragmatists were changing.

It was the Covid year, and I was wrapping up a career stint managing strategic planning for Kansas Farm Bureau. A man I considered the salt of the earth put up a huge sign on his farm. “F--- Biden.”

Really? …and it wasn’t a homemade sign. It was manufactured. Mass produced.

What happened to do unto others? What happened to the sense of decency that came to define us as Kansans?

A couple of generations after Watergate, are we reaping the whirlwind of too much emphasis on one office, one individual?

Has it become a political fait accompli?

Does the office of the President of the United States have too much power?

Will we navigate toward more checks? More balances? We may find out very soon.

Haven’t seen much pushback from Congress… though to his credit, Jerry Moran is quietly, surgically pushing back. He worked to exempt the National Weather Service in Goodland from a hiring freeze… called his former Senate colleague Marco Rubio at the State Department and restored some U-S-A-I-D efforts.  

I say quietly… but the only reason I know… is that is you told me. I read it in the news.

The cases are piling up on the doorstep of the U-S Supreme Court. There are no clear inferences to be drawn on their rulings so far. Mixed bag.

Here’s my fear, at some point, the high court will rule on something the president cares deeply about… and will say one of two things to him.

Keep going…  or stop doing that.

If it’s the latter… and he says, “make me,” then we’ll be in uncharted waters… which may force some introspection especially from the legislative branch of government… about fealty… versus the American Constitution and the rule of law. 

It will take courage… and leadership… both, by the way, natural byproducts of critical thinking.

Closer to home… I reflect on what happened in Marion. In many ways… it was a mirror reflection of our society today.

My interpretation: Local newspaper doing its job… community stakeholder didn’t like it. Happens every day…  in every community.

Here’s what’s different. I can’t get in the head and heart of the individuals, who at some point, thought it was a good idea to raid a newsroom and confiscate laptops…  but I can draw conclusions… based on my experience… as a journalist… a lifelong Kansan… and a critical thinker..  

Perhaps emboldened by rhetoric emanating from the leader of the free world… and lacking the desire… or God forbid, the ability… to think critically about it… they act on their first thought… move forward… and in a manner I’ve never seen before… blatantly violate the freedom of the press.  

I had Riley County prosecutor Barry Wilkerson on my show recently… he’s one of two special prosecutors in the Marion County Record case… he’s a Kansas kid… reasonable…  common sense…  pragmatic…  been re-elected every four years for a generation…   without opposition.

He joked that when the judge was casting about for special prosecutors, he didn’t dive under the table fast enough.

But when asked to serve… he responded in the way that was expected… by the court system… by his profession… and by his conscience:

Yes.  

He wasn’t going to say it on the air… because he’s a smart lawyer and respects the judicial process... 

But it was clear… who was right and who was wrong. You’re seeing that play out in the postgame litigation.

++

Let me land the plane…   allow you to get on with your convention.

We can gain new knowledge any number of ways. We can go to school…  read a book... watch a YouTube video.

I can gain interpretations of that knowledge, by engaging in dialogue with someone smarter than me…   or someone whose judgment I trust.

Not everyone reads books or goes to school… there are a number of people in our society today walking around completely unencumbered by a college degree.

You’re looking at one of them.

Not everyone engages with others…  it may be willful ignorance, false pride… they may just be shy… whatever. 

Over the course of my life in Kansas… through all my personal and professional experience... I have come to believe the key to today’s societal ills are members of society who think longer, deeper, and more critically.

Journalism is the one constant in our world to allow that.

When the Associated Press gets kicked out of the White House press room because they ignore one guy’s goofy idea to try to rename a body of water… 

When the Speaker of the Kansas House of Representatives bars reporters from the House floor… regardless of his motivation…

When a White House official suggests TV reporters be imprisoned because their coverage gets under the thin skin…

When a student journalist gets stuffed into a van because she wrote an op-ed…

When a police chief in a Kansas community raids a newsroom and the homes of the publishers… on a personal vendetta…  our answer must be clear:

No.

These things are not within reason.

Not because of whatever personal ideology or politics may serve to drive the actions...

… but because of two-and-a-half centuries of American freedoms, set forth in… and protected by… the Constitution of the United States.   

I derive a tangible benefit from the fruits of your labor… I am smarter after I consume the news. I have gained new knowledge.

The intangible value of your work… is nothing less than the opportunities that flow from the second thought. That’s good for our country, for Kansas… our communities… our neighbors, friends and families… our society.

Thank you again for your kind invitation to allow me to spend this time with you here today.