Editorial

​Those we lost in March: we were lucky to know them

April 27th, 2025

By Sabrina Hornung

sabrina@hpr1.com

It’s no secret that there are folks among us who make our communities a more vibrant place through both their actions and means of creative expression. Heck, you could be one of them yourself.

March was a tough month for many in the F-M, as we grieve the loss of friends who helped make our community brighter. We feel it would be remiss to not mention the contributions, legacies and lasting lessons learned from our friends who have passed on this past…

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Seeking out an oasis in a news desert: How do you get your news?

March 15th, 2025

By Sabrina Hornung

sabrina@hpr1.com

I feel like reading a newspaper is the equivalent of listening to music on vinyl. Not only is it analog, it’s an experience. I might be a little biased, but there's something about the rustling of the pages and the scent of ink mixed with your morning coffee. It provides a community conversation. It keeps everyone on the same page and can potentially quell (or at least slow down) the small town rumor mill. It offers an air of transparency for county…

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​Unplug, refocus and take care: small revolutionary acts

February 21st, 2025

By Sabrina Hornung

sabrina@hpr1.com

2025 marks us halfway through the roaring 2020s. Boy, am I glad I didn’t bob my hair for this go-around. It feels like we’re off to the wrong roar, opening Pandora’s box of what-the-Fox news.

Thanks to the interweb, we’ve become accustomed to the world at our fingertips and no speed limit on the information superhighway. Yet why does it feel like it’s leading to our de-evolution? Between this 24-hour news cycle, doomscrolling through social…

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​An Electric Heater-Side Chat About Queer Kids Today

January 17th, 2025

By Faye Seidler

fayeseidler@gmail.com

As I write this article, it’s January, and the temperatures in North Dakota are negative. I’m living in a house and our furnace just died a forever death after years of quick fixes. Yet, small pockets of the house remain warm by the grace of electric heaters. The water that used to warm our house now still circulates to stop it from freezing, but thankfully our water heater still makes life worth living.

I’ve been writing about queer kids in…

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​‘No one wants to work anymore.’ Why?

December 19th, 2024

By Sabrina Hornung

sabrina@hpr1.com

I’m really sick of the “Nobody wants to work anymore” narrative. Like, really sick. I can’t hide the eye rolls and I don’t even try to hide them anymore. In fact, I feel like they’ll get stuck in the back of my head if I stifle them.

Instead, when folks bring this up, they need to be challenged with questions about what we’re offering our workforce and ask the tough questions about housing, childcare and the average age of folks around…

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​What The Hell Just Happened

November 21st, 2024

By Jim Fuglie

jimfuglie920@gmail.com

Okay, so last month I promised you a woman President of the United States. So much for my predictability quotient.

Lesson 1: Never promise something you can’t control. And nobody, not even Melania, can control Donald Trump.

The rest of my predictions were not too bad. I just missed a big one. By a mile. I predicted Republicans were pretty much going to sweep North Dakota, though. I got that right.

But I was pretty confident all along that Donald…

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​Political Chaos

October 16th, 2024

By Jim Fuglie

jimfuglie920@gmail.com

As a political columnist, I know I should be writing an election preview for the issue of this paper that comes out just a couple weeks before what is being labeled, once again, as “the most important election of our lifetime.” Okay, so here goes my election preview:

  • In North Dakota, the Republicans are going to win. Pretty much everything.
  • In the United States of America, we’re going to elect our first woman president.

Well, now that we have…

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The Little Newspaper That Could

September 19th, 2024

Happy 30th Birthday HPR

By John Strand

jas@hpr1.com

Thirty years ago some gutsy UND student journalists hanging at Whitey’s in East Grand Forks got enough liquid courage to create their own damn newspaper. Then with drinks raised, they toasted the paper’s name, the High Plains Reader. The first issue was dated September 8, 1994.

There's been a lot of water under the bridge since then. Hundreds of editions, thousands of pages and bylines. Countless contributors and advertisers. The…

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We still have glass ceilings to shatter

August 15th, 2024

We’re making progress.

By Sabrina Hornung

sabrina@hpr1.com

Yay Kamala! It is such a relief to see a candidate for POTUS who is actually capable of doing the job and preserving our representative democracy. And, of course, she’s female and endorsed by Hillary Clinton, the best-qualified presidential candidate of the century so far.

But after cruising social media for the last few weeks, it’s quite apparent that our nation has an extremely unhealthy attitude toward not only women,…

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Prayers are not enough

July 18th, 2024

Recovering from Pennsylvania

By John Strand

jas@hpr1.com

Holy shit, America! Is this a path we want to stay on? Is this the tipping point or brink we’re at? Is it a sign of more to come, or a come to Jesus moment where we decide enough is enough?

The unbelievable reality that a 20-year-old kid would decide to take a semi-automatic long rifle and attempt to assassinate former President Donald Trump at a political rally in Pennsylvania yesterday is stunning beyond words. Thank God he…

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