GREENSBURG, Kan. (KPR) — The people of Greensburg, Kansas, routinely tell media outlets, other cities, and individuals all over the world the story of what happened to their town on May 4, 2007. The horror of a 1.7-mile-wide EF-5 tornado hitting any town, but particularly a tiny one like theirs, bears infinite retellings.
Similarly, the town's reaction to losing everything is told and retold. Given the opportunity to start from a blank slate, those who stayed decided to rebuild green. Eventually the town boasted more LEED Platinum buildings per capita than anywhere else in the United States.
But their forward-thinking and intentional planning didn't stop with sustainability. City planners did something else that has had a lasting ripple-effect: They built a media center.
"This was, remember, 2007," Mayor Matt Christenson says. "It's pre-iPhone. It's pre-Facebook. And, after the tornado, all the residents of Greensburg kind of scattered to the wind. It was very hard for people to get ahold of their neighbors if they needed to."
Christenson says that Burt Biles, a professor at Kansas State University, and Jean West, the county commissioner at the time of the tornado, came to town to see how their institutions could help. He recalls that the two met at a planning session and, recognizing the need for a communication system, started brainstorming.
The resulting media center originally began as a hub where people could go for news and updates. But the committee also hardwired the high school gym and the town's theater — both gathering places and performance and event venues — to be broadcast-ready.
Sixteen years after its opening, the Kiowa County Media Center still serves as a community hub, but it has also developed into a broadcasting powerhouse, training scores of students along the way. Grant Neuhold, the executive director, says the media center's Hudl TVchannel "kind of looks like the ESPN of Kansas."
He explains, "Not a lot of high school broadcasts involve five cameras with instant replay and two commentators and all the graphics and going to commercial and all the stuff that you would sit down and watch on TV."
Between track meets, basketball games, volleyball games, football games, and other events, Neuhold estimates that the media center streams over 250 activities per school year.
But full-time staff only includes two other employees: A marketing manager and a sports director.
Since the beginning, he's involved people of any age who are interested in learning how to live stream an event. Christenson's 73-year-old father is on the crew, but it's mostly made up of middle and high school students.
Girls between the ages of 11 and 13 entirely made up the crew that streamed the recent Kiowa County homecoming game. This game, and others that are within county limits, fall under the umbrella of Maverick Athletics. Student volunteers typically work for up to about 15 hours per week — those 14 and older are paid.
At the homecoming game, eighth-grader Evellyn Prothro ran the camera atop the press box, sixth graders Adilyn Craft and Payton Hoffman were in the end zones, and Neuhold's sixth-grade daughter Eisley directed the entire production from a headset and laptop in the press box.
He rotated the girls' responsibilities at half-time.
"Payton's been doing a lot of the directing and technical directing," Neuhold says, "and she has a real knack for it. So, they all kind of just gravitate to certain positions, and then I kind of coax them into making sure they try some other ones."
He estimates that he's trained over 100 students. Several developed careers in broadcast.
Like the homecoming crew, 28-year-old Josh Cannon got involved in sixth grade. Now he's the live stream production specialist for Washburn University, where he graduated in 2020.
He laughs and says that sometimes he uses Kiowa County Media Center footage "to teach my students … when they have a bad night. They're like: 'This is tough to do.' I'm like, 'Dude, you are 20-whatever years old. These 11-year-olds can do this. What are you talking about?'"
Cannon and Neuhold stay in touch. Not long ago, Neuhold made the nearly four-hour trek to Topeka for a paid streaming job.
"I got to work with him in my buildings," Cannon says, "and I got to show him what I do."
Neuhold generates revenue for the media center by broadcasting state championships or regional track meets. Initial funding came from the county, but the goal has been to decrease reliance on that source.
"I would like the funding from the county to go to entities who cannot fund themselves, such as the senior center, the library, the museum. We have the luxury of going out, using our equipment and abilities to fund ourselves," Neuhold says.
Most broadcasts that take place very far outside of Kiowa County are under Kiowa County Media Center sports coverage. For those, he contracts with and pays adults to run the cameras, not students. An additional source of revenue for those jobs comes from larger corporate sponsors or sponsors in the towns they're broadcasting from.
Maverick Athletics, on the other hand — the student-run broadcasts — look for sponsorships from local businesses to cover expenses.
And even when Neuhold is away from Kiowa County, he doesn't often have to search hard for a well-trained crew if he's unable to send one from home base.
The relationships he's built with so many of his students are great for two reasons. One, he says, is that it's "really awesome to have that kind of impact on somebody's life, to give them a career path that they probably wouldn't have otherwise had."
But also, "being then a resource to me across the state to be able to call upon them. 'Hey, I need some guys. Do you have anybody that you've trained in your facilities that you can send my way?' And that relationship, to me, is just one of the coolest."
This report is part of the Kansas Public Radio series Rural Kansas Rising: Tech, Talent, and Tomorrow's Jobs. Funding for the series was provided by the Kansas Department of Commerce and the Office of Rural Prosperity.
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