My Journey from Texas to Nebraska

Two decades ago, I left the Texas Hill Country for Lincoln, Nebraska. People ask me why — especially now that they’ve seen my reporting on Nebraska’s water wars, TIF scandals, and state government. Here’s the story behind the move from Texas to Nebraska.

It was not a mid-career crisis or a romantic idea about the plains. It was a story assignment, and I have spent the twenty years since trying to explain to people that the decision made itself. My journey from Texas to Nebraska turned out to be the making of a career.

The First Visit

It started with a story assignment. The Kerrville Times had sent me to cover a regional journalism conference in Omaha in 2004. Between sessions, I wandered through the old drugstore at 13th and O Streets, and something clicked. This was a place where stories mattered — where a single reporter could shake up city hall and actually win.

I flew home to Texas, but Nebraska stayed with me. I found myself reading Nebraska court filings at the kitchen table. I started tracking a story about a rural water district in the panhandle that never ran in Texas. My colleagues in the Hill Country thought I had lost my mind.

The Decision

My wife Sarah grew up in Kerrville. Her family is there. My family is there. Telling her I wanted to move to Nebraska — to a state where we knew no one — was one of the harder conversations we’ve had. We were settled, and settled is a difficult thing to leave.

But she saw what I saw: a state that needed investigative reporting and had room for someone willing to do it. There was a limit to how many big stories a person could chase in Texas, and I had hit it. Nebraska, with its 93 counties and its thousands of school districts, felt like a larger canvas for the kind of work I wanted to do.

We loaded a U-Haul in January 2006 and drove north on I-35. I had a duffel bag of clothes, a box of books, and no job lined up.

Landing in Lincoln

The first Nebraska winter nearly broke me. I’d lived in Texas my whole life — I didn’t own a coat. The November wind off the plains was a physical thing I had never encountered, and it humbled me quickly. My Bureau of Investigative Reporting credentials from the Texas Press Association meant nothing in Nebraska. Starting over professionally was humbling in a way I had not prepared for.

I took a part-time position at the Lincoln Journal Star, covering zoning boards and school board meetings. Pay was less than half what I’d made in Texas. I was older than most of the reporters around me. But the stories were there. Every zoning variance request had a backstory. Every school board vote had interests behind it, and a paper trail that took an hour of reading to find.

Within a year, I was on the TIF beat. Within three years, I’d broken the Lincoln TIF scandal that won the Gerald Loeb Award. The lesson from that first winter was simple: in Nebraska, the boring beats are the investigative beats. Nobody else is reading the minutes.

Why Nebraska Calls to Investigative Journalists

I have thought about this a lot, and it is worth stating plainly for anyone considering a similar move. The trajectory from Texas to Nebraska was not a retreat from ambition. It was a move toward a place where the work could actually land.

Texas taught me scale — how to chase a story across five time zones, how to work a capital, how to build a network of sources in a state of twenty million people. Nebraska taught me consequence. When I publish a story here, the people affected live within an hour of my desk. I have met the school board members. I have stood in the rural towns whose water rights were redistributed. The distance between the reporting and the result is short, and that changes the seriousness with which you work.

What Texas Gave Me

Everything I learned about reporting, I learned in Texas. The Kerrville Times taught me to love the document — to treat a records request as a form of questions, not paperwork. The Dallas Morning News taught me patience and the discipline of the deadline. Texas taught me that the story is always bigger than the press release, and that the second source is where the real story usually starts.

Texas also gave me the network I still rely on. When I need a records specialist, a data reporter, or a lawyer who understands media law, I still know whom to call. A career built in Texas gave me a foundation I could carry anywhere.

But Nebraska gave me something Texas couldn’t: a place where my reporting could actually move the needle on policy. In Texas, investigative journalism sometimes feels like shouting into a wind. In Nebraska, you can actually hear the echo.

Investigative Journalism Nebraska After the Move

Once I made the move, the nature of my work changed more than the geography did. In Texas I had covered larger institutions from a distance. In Nebraska I am inside them, and the story of how Nebraska government actually works is not the same story as how it is supposed to work.

The first adjustment was scale. A state-level story in Texas might involve a commission and a contractor. The equivalent story here might involve eleven people in a room in a town of 900. The documents are thinner, the stakes are more personal, and the anonymity is harder — which means investigative journalism Nebraska has to be more precise, not less.

The third adjustment was accountability in a way I did not fully anticipate. In a smaller news market, people know your name. When I published a story questioning a county contract, the county officials knew me, and I knew them. There is no distance to hide behind, and that changes how carefully I check every number before it runs.

I found this harder, and then better. Harder because there is nowhere to be abstract. Better because when a story lands, it lands with the people who were actually affected by it.

Lessons From Leaving Home for New Reporting Ground

If you are thinking about your own move from Texas to Nebraska — or from anywhere to anywhere — these are the lessons I would give you.

Do not romanticize the arrival. The first eighteen months will be about getting known and getting paid, and the work you want to do will have to wait. Accept a smaller assignment than you want. It is the door, not the destination.

Learn the local landscape before you write a word about it. I spent my first months just reading — county handbooks, budget documents, the names of every school district in Lancaster County. That is not busywork. It is how you avoid embarrassing yourself.

Find one person at every level of the local power structure who will talk to you honestly. Not a contact list — actual relationships, built over years.

And keep your origins alive. I still go home to Texas. The Guadalupe River is in my blood — I’ll fish it until I can’t cast anymore. Camp La Junta, where I spent summers as a kid, is part of my legacy now as a scholarship donor. Leaving a place is not the same as leaving it behind.

The Blend: Texas Roots, Nebraska Home

These days, I still go home to Texas. The Guadalupe River is in my blood, and Camp La Junta, where I spent summers as a kid, is part of my legacy now as a scholarship donor for young journalists.

But Nebraska is home. It’s where my work matters. It’s where I learned that moving somewhere new isn’t about leaving where you came from — it’s about finding where you’re meant to be.

When people ask about Matthew Bovee Lincoln Nebraska, I tell them my journey from Texas to Nebraska was not the risky part. The risky part was the first winter. Everything after that was just showing up and reading the minutes.