Things are starting to look better for the Hillsboro Community Hospital now that a new group is handling the day-to-day operations as foreclosure hearings are being dealt with. No one can tell the future, but we are certainly hopeful that the hospital will remain open, will find a suitable buyer, and this mess can be put in the rearview in […]

Stories like the series of stories we are publishing about the Hillsboro Hospital’s financial troubles are never easy or enjoyable to write. It is never easy to find people to comment or give context to something that has people in the county both frustrated and afraid. Two paragraphs in and I haven’t even talked about the employees of the hospital which […]

I have grown to hate social media more and more every day. My general distaste for the product, no matter the format, isn’t how they work or how much of my time it takes up at work, but rather what it has turned people into. One of my favorite quotes is “The internet is the single best and worst thing […]

Recently I was asked to speak at an event hosted by the Texas Center for Community Journalism in Fort Worth, Texas. The event allowed me to get out of town for a few days, see my sister in Texas, and catch a basketball game while we were there. What the trip also allowed me to see was the Oak Cliff neighborhood […]

The holidays are a time when I spend probably the most time with my family. My aunt usually drives home from St. Louis, my sister drives north from Texas, and generally, there is a packed house in Buhler to greet me. I have never once thought about that not being the case for me until recently. My best friend lost his mother […]

Consider your neighbors and friends here locally that own businesses for your holiday shopping before going to another county to shop. Any money that stays in Marion County is good for the overall economy and while it’s always fun to take a trip to Wichita for a day, consider buying what you can here at home. – Joey Young, Publisher

There will be five members on the county commission even if no one quite knows how to get there yet. I am not sure this was a good idea or not, but one thing we know to be for certain is that the drawing of the districts will need to be done with absolute care. Personally, I would have rather […]

Twenty years of the Hillsboro Free Press is a pretty neat milestone to celebrate. There aren’t many newspapers in this world celebrating 20-years in 2018. That makes this newspaper unique. It also makes it’s founders unique. Joel Klaassen and Don Ratzlaff walked out onto a limb when they started this paper in a rural Kansas county and trusted that the […]

There have been many things written about me, some disparaging and some complimentary, but at least most of those folks have the decency to tell me who is throwing the compliment or barb. This week we received many complaints about a certain columnist in The Free Press. Bob Woelk has written a column for as long as I have been publisher […]

Marion County’s two largest cities don’t have the luxury of not collaborating to thrive. Hillsboro and Marion must treat each other not just as neighbors but almost as one entity to survive and thrive. Reading Lou Thurston’s report below makes me happy. Both cities have collaborated in the past on many issues. Both mayors talk the talk, too. It was […]