Looking back on the big news The Eagle reported on and uncovered in Wichita this year

Wichita had plenty of big news this year, from being under safety advisories on its drinking water to major elections to the sale of its minor league baseball team.

Through it all, Eagle reporters were there to ensure that residents were kept abreast of what was happening in our peerless city, digging deep to root out the things Wichitans needed to know.

Our local reporters wrote more than 3,500 stories in 2022 covering the topics that readers have shown are the most important to them: from breaking news to local businesses opening and closing, from city and county politics to KU winning its fourth NCAA title and K-State’s spectacular run to the Sugar Bowl.

Here are some of the highlights of our award-winning journalists’ work this year.

Inappropriate text messages

In March, Michael Stavola broke the news of a series of private messages between Wichita police officers and Sedgwick County sheriff’s deputies that included praising those who “permanently deescalated people who needed permanent de-escalation” and racist memes, including ones mocking George Floyd and one of Elmer Fudd with a shotgun saying, “Be very very quiet I’m hunting (racial slur).”

His reporting also uncovered the very different outcomes after internal investigations at the two departments, with the Sheriff’s Office employees no longer working there but police department employees receiving little to no punishment.

The effects of Michael’s reporting reverberate to today, with the city suspending multiple SWAT team members and hiring a consulting firm to audit the police force and suggest reforms. The city also faces a potential lawsuit from former Police Chief Gordon Ramsay and by his deputy chiefs, who say they were blocked from trying to fix the problems

Natural gas

In February, Dion Lefler discovered and reported about how 28 large natural gas users hijacked gas intended for regular customers – enough to heat tens of thousands of homes – during 2021’s freezing weather disaster. Those gas marketers and commercial/industrial customers could have been hit with a theoretical maximum of $888 million in repayments and penalties, but they negotiated down to a fraction of that, which means the costs will hit the majority of Kansans in the wallet.

Once he was named opinion editor, Dion kept fighting for everyday Kansans by applying heat to the politicians who complained about the problem but did nothing to solve it and to the regulators who allowed this to happen.

The Andover tornado

When a tornado struck Andover on April 29, most of the newsroom staff had already begun their weekend. But everyone shoved aside their plans and pitched in to cover the disaster, many working overnight to get essential information out.

In the first few days we published dozens of stories and numerous videos of the event, ranging from breaking news coverage to useful articles such as how victims could get assistance, how others could offer help, how to avoid storm-related scams and more.

And our stories didn’t stop there. We’ve continued to report on Andover rebuilding, including our most recent story about a family celebrating the holidays while waiting for their home to be rebuilt.

Cedric “CJ” Lofton

An important story we worked on throughout the year involved more than three dozen articles taking a closer look at the circumstances surrounding the death of Wichita teenager Cedric Lofton and the changes being made to help prevent another such death.

Top among these was the work of Eagle reporters Matthew Kelly and Chance Swaim when they broke the news of how a police officer changed his answers on a form so that the teen who was struggling with mental illness was booked into the Sedgwick County Juvenile Intake Assessment Center instead of taken to a hospital.

This month, we published an extensive report on how local and state agencies have implemented 26 of the 58 recommendations made by a juvenile justice task force. And our work isn’t done. Cedric’s death was a tragedy that exposed many troubling areas in our community — areas that we will continue to explore.

Inside The Eagle

I mentioned earlier that our journalists are award winners, and this year was no exception.

The team of Chance Swaim and Michael Stavola was one of six finalists for the prestigious Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting for their 2021 work uncovering issues at Sedgwick County EMS. Of particular note was that The Eagle was the only local news organization without a national partner to be named as a finalist. And virtually every member of the staff was a winner in the Kansas Press Association contest, including a win for Overall News and Writing Excellence.

Notably, visual journalists Travis Heying and Jaime Green were honored with Emmy Awards for our documentary about the 70-year search for Father Emil Kapaun, the first such award in our history.

The Emmy was indicative of the accelerating changes in the news industry – and at The Eagle.

For the past several years more and more people have migrated from newsprint to digital sources for news and we have adapted with them, bringing us to the point where 87% of our daily readership now is on Kansas.com. The success of our site can be easily seen in the numbers: An average of 10 million page views and 1.65 million unique visitors a month.

As part of that growth we were blessed with two new reporters this year. Eduardo Castillo came aboard in January as a breaking news reporter. Two weeks ago, Lindsay Smith joined us as a service journalism reporter.

Lindsay’s job is a new one for The Eagle, with her primary focus each day being to answer the questions that Wichitans have. This covers a number of areas, from when local grocery stores will close on Christmas Eve to the latest number of people affected by the flu. In short, her job is to think about you and work to help you navigate Wichita.

Thank you

To wrap things up I want to highlight two instances that show how amazing Eagle readers are.

When we wrote about the losses Andover residents suffered after the tornado, readers reached out offering to replace a car and lost wedding rings.

When Matthew Kelly wrote about an Afghan man who had helped the U.S. military during the war and moved his family to Wichita, he said that the man biked 30 minutes every day to work. The day after that story was published, a Wichita man offered to give him a car.

Those are just two acts of kindness, but they illustrate the fundamental decency of Kansans.

So, while there has been much change in the past year, one thing that hasn’t is my appreciation of you, our readers. We couldn’t do our jobs without your support.

Thank you and happy new year.