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Central Standard

Seg. 1: Female Fire Chief | Seg. 2: Paying For News | Seg. 3: Bison

Segment 1: What it's like to be the first woman in charge at the Kansas City Fire Department.

As Donna Maize takes over as Fire Chief, she makes Kansas City history and achieves a lifelong dream.

Segment 2, beginning at 18:30: How a paywall is changing everything for the Shawnee Mission Post.

As newspapers struggle for subscribers across the country, a news site in Johnson County has only grown since asking readers to pay.

Segment 3, beginning at 36:35: 10 years ago, they welcomed 13 bison. Today, they have 100.

Seeing bison out on the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve in the Flint Hills may feel natural, but it wouldn't have happened without human intervention.

People don't make cameos in news stories; the human story is the story, with characters affected by news events, not defined by them. As a columnist and podcaster, I want to acknowledge what it feels like to live through this time in Kansas City, one vantage point at a time. Together, these weekly vignettes form a collage of daily life in Kansas City as it changes in some ways, and stubbornly resists change in others. You can follow me on Twitter @GinaKCUR or email me at gina@kcur.org.
Whether it’s something happening right now or something that happened 100 years ago, some stories don’t fit in the short few minutes of a newscast. As a podcast producer and reporter at KCUR Studios, I help investigate questions and local curiosities in a way that brings listeners along for adventures with plot twists and thought-provoking ideas. Sometimes there isn’t an easy answer in the end – but my hope is that we all leave with a greater understanding of the city we live in. Reach me at mackenzie@kcur.org.