Frank Morris
Frank Morris has supervised the reporters in KCUR's newsroom since 1999. In addition to his managerial duties, Morris files regularly with National Public Radio. He’s covered everything from tornadoes to tax law for the network, in stories spanning eight states. His work has won dozens of awards, including four national Public Radio News Directors awards (PRNDIs) and several regional Edward R. Murrow awards. In 2012 he was honored to be named "Journalist of the Year" by the Heart of America Press Club.
Morris grew up in rural Kansas listening to KHCC, spun records at KJHK throughout college at the University of Kansas, and cut his teeth in journalism as an intern for Kansas Public Radio, in the Kansas statehouse.
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Most remote towns are shrinking, whether they like it or not. But if they take inspiration from industrial Eastern Europe after the Cold War, they can improve even as they get smaller. -
Three militia members go on trial Tuesday for plotting to bomb Somali immigrants working in the Kansas Meatpacking Triangle, a constellation of minority-majority, hardscrabble pioneer towns, that depend on foreign labor. Somali immigrants have all but abandoned one town, despite civic and police efforts to reassure them that they're safe there. Some residents want them to return.
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"Justice is not rescuing Sgt. Bergdahl from his Taliban captors, in the cage where he was for years, only to place him in a cell," said his defense. But prosecutors say he must be held responsible. -
If you get in a car accident on a rural stretch of highway in Kansas, one volunteer firefighter says, you'd better hope it happens near a county with a well-equipped fire department. -
The second largest Native American city in North America may have been in Kansas. In 1601, a group of Spanish conquistadors stumbled on a vast city. By the time French explorers showed up in the area a century later, the inhabitants had been decimated by European diseases and the city was gone. It's in Arkansas City, Kansas, where locals had been pulling "literally tons" of artifacts from plowed fields for years. But it wasn't until a high school kid with a metal detector found a Spanish cannon shot, that a local archaeologist knew he had a match.
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More Americans are looking for a second home — on wheels. After crashing hard in the recession, RV sales have rebounded and are on track to approach record levels this year. -
Some Kansas City software developers built what they believe is the world's fastest Rubik's Cube-solving robot. They built it in their spare time, partly because one of the guys wanted something to do with his new 3-D printer. Their machine can sort out a scrambled Rubik's Cube in just a little over one second. That's much faster than the second fastest robot and not quite five times faster than the quickest "human speed solver." A judge from the Guinness Book of World Records will judge the robot.
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The U.S. has a chronic shortage of truck drivers — by one estimate, the trucking industry is short almost 50,000 drivers. If that number doubles as predicted, shipping disruptions will ensue. -
A shortage of line workers raises the question: How do you entice millennials into tough electric utility work, when "you can't get a kid to lick a stamp, much less climb a pole" these days? -
The Kansas City Royals staged a dramatic Game 5 comeback to beat the New York Mets Sunday night, earning their first World Series title in 30 years and thrilling fans who have been desperate to win after last year's crushing loss.
