How Hawver’s Capitol Report began
By Vickie Hawver
(Excerpted from an HCR article on June 18, 2023 – marking the 30th birthday of Hawver’s Capitol Report)
Thirty years ago, two bleary-eyed journalists/would-be-entrepreneurs looked at each other and wondered what the heck they were doing – or rather, had just done.
It was dawn on Thursday, June 17, 1993, and my husband Martin and I were slumped in our chairs in our basement home office, staring at my computer as I printed out eight pages – the culmination of nearly 24 straight hours of writing, editing, laying out and proofing.
The premiere edition of Hawver’s Capitol Report was ready to be driven to the printing company, printed, then labeled by us and snail-mailed by us late that afternoon and miraculously (by today’s standards) it would arrive the next day, on June 18 (its official publication date), in the mailboxes of folks we hoped might actually pay us $200 a year to subscribe.
It worked. Happy 30th anniversary, Hawver’s Capitol Report!
A ‘new paradigm’
HCR, as we call it, has roots back to 1977, when Martin began covering the Kansas Legislature for the Topeka Capital-Journal, where he had worked since starting as a 16-year-old copyboy in 1967. Meanwhile, I began working at the CJ in the summer of 1974 as a journalism intern from Washburn University. We advanced in our careers there (and oh yes, got married), Martin moving to Statehouse coverage and I becoming health editor.
In the 1990s, American journalism was changing. Bigger newspapers were buying smaller ones. The CJ was the flagship of a regional chain that was ready to be sold. A new editor was brought in to streamline the newsroom. He preached a “new paradigm,” redrawing the newsroom staff into four sections, each headed by a managing editor. Talk was I was going to be named the features managing editor, a new position. That would be the first time a woman had achieved that management level at the CJ. But the reorganization meant that those of us who had spent years carving out our niches – I had created a three-page Saturday health section that I wrote, edited and designed in addition to doing daily stories on the health industry, and several other reporter/editors had similar achievements in their areas – would be demoted to only being reporters again. If I were named a managing editor, it would be an honor, but it would mean I would demote others, including several women. If I weren’t selected, I would be among the demoted.
I resigned. I was told my resignation letter was nicely typed.
A governor’s skirts
Meanwhile, Martin, by virtue of being in the Statehouse, had been shielded from the new editor. But by the spring of 1993, Martin and the senior Statehouse writer, Roger Myers, were in his gunsights, told to cut back on their stories, that readers didn’t care about state government and political news. Yet there was one story the editor did want Martin to do: to report that Kansas’ first woman governor, Joan Finney, wore skirts that were too short for a woman her age. Martin refused.
We spent a Sunday afternoon figuring out what to do and decided, hey, let’s have my business, Hawver News Company, create a nonpartisan news service focusing on Kansas government and politics. Why not? Martin would do most of the reporting and writing, I would do the editing and layout, we’d share labeling and mailing duties, and I would do the marketing and billing while continuing to run my writing/editing/consulting business that would pay our mortgage. We would focus on providing news to folks really invested in the Statehouse.
Martin resigned from the CJ, and I hired him. Lew Ferguson, Kansas AP bureau chief, said to call our news service Hawver’s Capitol Report. We told our friend, lobbyist Tuck Duncan, about our plans and he handed us a $200 check on May 21, 1993. Our first subscriber! We cobbled together a potential subscriber list and snail-mailed hundreds of letters about our plans, along with subscription forms and return envelopes. Thanks to the kindness of Karl Fruendt, who covered the Statehouse for KTKA Channel 49, Martin easily moved from his CJ Statehouse first-floor office to Karl’s office a few doors away. (Martin later would move to his own office near Karl’s and in 2005 move to the brand-new Statehouse press suites on the Garden Level, part of the Capitol’s massive renovation.)
Up all night
We had a date with a local printing company first thing on June 17, so we began working on the newsletter early on June 16. We worked all day and night. We made our first deadline. Amazingly, checks started coming in on June 21. Dick Carter Jr., now a well-known lobbyist at the Statehouse, was fresh out of college and helped sell HCR subscriptions.
We produced eight-page, three-hole-punched newsletters 40 times a year, providing news and analysis. From the start, Martin wrote his “Rail” column and called himself a “Railster,” one of the folks who gathered around the third-floor rail in the Statehouse rotunda, between the House and Senate chambers, where much work – and gossip – occurred. We also started a column called “HallTalk.”
In 1994, we started producing the Annual Hawver Kansas Legislative Guide, an idea Martin thought up. It grew over the years, providing in-depth legislative information plus tips on where to eat near the Statehouse. We initiated the Golden Fork Awards after the Legislature passed a law in 2000 requiring lobbyists to report hospitality spending on legislators. We covered local, statewide and national political conventions.
In 1996, we tried something new: Faxing Martin’s dispatches from the national political conventions in San Diego and Chicago. Martin called in his stories to me at our home office in late evening, then I faxed several hundred subscribers who had fax machines. Technology was such that I could only fax a few at a time, so I was pretty much up all night (a pattern?). Subscribers loved the service!
Moving to the digital age
In 1999, HCR took a monumental step: We started sending email bulletins as warranted between the snail-mailed newsletters. Not all subscribers had email addresses, but those who did loved the service. Around this time, HCR had grown to financially support both Martin and me, so I cut back my private client business until I was pretty much working for HCR full time.
In 2006, we took HCR digital, contracting with a company to provide templates and emailing services, and we started emailing HCR Flashes during the week and the HCR Newsletter some weekends. The new format allowed me to increase our revenue by selling ads displayed in the publications.
It sounds cliched, but over the years Martin has poured his heart and soul into HCR and the Kansas Statehouse. He was always thinking of and working on detailed reports we could provide – campaign finance, candidate guides, legislative wrap-ups. I did my editing, layout, marketing, ad sales, billing and writing from the comforts of a home office (no commercial sales in the Statehouse) decades before COVID-19 made that trendy, and I can vouch that Martin spent more time than almost anyone working at the Statehouse, especially during legislative deadlines. He would arrive early in the morning to attend party caucuses and stay until the last conference committee adjourned – often into the night, sending me stories to edit so I could send out overnight HCR Flashes. Just this past April, he was among those who weathered a legislative session that droned on until 4:30 a.m., then stayed to write his stories for an early-morning HCR.
Martin, who is known in the Statehouse for his acerbic (?) wit, is dean of the Kansas Capitol press corps, having covered the beat – he just completed his 47th legislative session – longer than any current reporter.
COVID hits the Statehouse
When the COVID pandemic hit the Kansas Statehouse in March 2020, it changed everything. The session raced to an early close. Zoom-type meetings became the norm. Few people roamed the halls, a sad situation for anyone as social as Martin.
Then things got worse. Martin had a mild heart attack in September 2020, followed in November by a nine-hour open heart surgery. That surgery went well, but complications followed, some caused by staffing shortages due to COVID. Early on the fifth day following surgery, an ICU nurse called to say they couldn’t wake Martin up and that I might not have time to get there. They resuscitated him, but more complications ensued, and he spent seven weeks in the hospital, during which time he contracted and was treated for COVID, too. He was released on Christmas Eve to two months of home-health care.
Meanwhile, we had a business to run. Although I spent every day with Martin in his ICU room and later in his regular room, I covered legislative interim meetings on my laptop and at home at night I wrote and sent out HCRs. I kept subscribers updated about Martin and I so appreciated their kind words and support for us when we clearly weren’t providing the product they were used to. With the Legislature starting in January 2021, I hired freelancer Todd Fertig to be our parttime “loafers on the ground” at the Statehouse while I stayed home to care for Martin who needed stomach tube feedings five times a day. But from our kitchen table, Martin watched meetings on his computer and wrote stories, which along with Todd’s I edited and assembled into HCR Flashes. Martin even helped me put together the 2021 Hawver Kansas Legislative Guide.
Martin was fiercely determined to recover his health. He happily returned to the Statehouse in March. But we were both tired. That medical journey made us think about our future. It was time to consider retiring. But how to do it? How to keep HCR going? We tossed around ideas and soldiered on for a year, torn by anxiety and uncertainty.
An internet scam?
Early on May 17, 2022, before our work day started, Martin and I were riding our bikes on the Shunga Trail when we stopped to sip water and check emails. I told Martin it looked like we had received a new iteration of the Nigerian Prince Scam. Some guy said he’d “been a fan of Hawver News from afar” and had a business deal for us.
Turned out it was legitimate. After months of consideration, on Dec. 16, 2022, Hawver’s Capitol Report became a part of State Affairs, a new digital news company whose mission is to provide the best in nonpartisan state government/political reporting and services. Specifically, HCR became a part of State Affairs Pro, a division of the company geared to folks invested in state government and politics – just what HCR had been doing all along. Perfect! Plus, State Affairs would provide additional reporters, new website-based features, marketing, social media, billing services and more.
It was the answer to how to preserve – and grow – HCR while allowing us to finally ease back. We’re both helping with the transition this year, working as co-managing editors of State Affairs Kansas Pro.
Thank you to our subscribers and advertisers who have made the past 30 years – and our dream – possible. Cheers to “the ‘hometown paper’ of the Kansas Statehouse community!”