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We here at Montana Free Press always want our work to have meaning. “Meaning,” though, is a difficult thing to measure because, after all, clicks and page views only tell us so much.
For instance, those metrics don’t gauge how we’ve helped Montanans understand their state when a small-town newspaper publishes one of our stories in its pages. They can’t quantify whether we’ve aided a voter in casting their ballot or assisted a homeowner as they try to sort through the nuances of their property taxes.
They don’t calculate whether a reader was compelled to show up and speak at their local school board meeting or to write a letter to their congressman about water quality. And they really can’t gauge if a city council member, county commissioner or legislator takes note when one of our reporters, pen and paper in hand, is in the room.
Yes, knowing how many readers visit our website can be a helpful tool, but “meaning,” I’ve found, is just as often conveyed over coffee at a diner or in the line at the grocery store. As an editor, few things give me as much pleasure as overhearing someone say, “Did you see the story about…?” and knowing that it came from our reporters here at MTFP.
So, with that in mind, I’ve asked our reporters to share here their favorite stories from the last year. For a variety of reasons, these are the stories that they found somehow meaningful. We hope that you will, too.
A programming note: Lowdown will not publish next Friday, Jan. 2, as most of our staff takes time away from work for the holidays. We’ll return on Jan. 9.
— Nick Ehli, Lowdown editor
From Mara Silvers
Some of my most meaningful assignments in 2025 stemmed from Montana Free Press’ partnership with ProPublica regarding Dr. Tom Weiner, a former Helena cancer doctor who left behind a trail of suspicious deaths and accounts of poor patient care, despite his local popularity. I learned about the limitations of Montana’s medical malpractice laws, the obscure process of medical licensing board investigations and how families are often left in limbo when they try to peel back the layers of deaths that happened years ago.
Later on in the year, I reported on another family trying to make sense of the death of a loved one. Since MTFP first uncovered the death of Billings nurse Amy Young, state lawmakers and the state labor department have taken steps to overhaul a recovery program for medical providers who have struggled with addiction. The private company the state hired to run the program, Maximus, Inc., has decided to exit its contract at the end of January.
Just when I thought the year was winding down, news about Weiner surfaced again. On Dec. 19, a panel of medical board members agreed to revoke Weiner’s license based on findings that he violated the standard of care for seven unnamed patients.
From Nora Mabie
After years of wondering why it’s so hard to build housing in Indian Country, I spent this year reporting out an answer, talking to dozens of people and driving thousands of miles across the state along the way. My three-part series, The Shelter Gap, documents Indian Country’s housing crisis, investigates the root causes of chronic housing shortages on reservation land and highlights what’s possible when residents achieve stable housing. I hope you’ll read it if you haven’t already.
I also wrote two stories this year focused on how Blackfeet community members are working to prevent suicide, a chronic issue for Montana that’s often heightened in tribal communities where people must often rely on overburdened and underfunded systems of care. Community members told me that solutions must come from within — and be culturally informed. On the Blackfeet Reservation, educators are using heavy metal music to help students process grief and face darkness head-on. And following their brother’s death, two sisters are creating a horse-based alternative to typical therapy.
From JoVonne Wagner
Some of my most memorable reporting on the Helena local beat included stories I’ve covered in my newsletter, Helena This Week. The first thing that comes to mind is coverage about the reaction of Myrna Loy’s executive director to some grant cuts after the National Endowment for the Arts changed funding criteria under the Trump administration. A (close) runner-up was the time I got to cover how the Holter Museum of Art handled a former employee’s massive book collection after his passing. Another favorite was my story about the Original Montana Club’s comeback.
From Eric Dietrich
I’ll keep this brief: Some of the most fun things I wrote about this year were a luxury home loophole in the state’s agricultural tax code, a super-lobbiest hiding in public documents we went to court for and five of the many fascinating treasures on display at the state’s new history museum.
From Katie Fairbanks
Some of my most memorable reporting in Missoula this year was for stories about changes to the city’s services for unhoused people.
In light of the city’s March announcement of the closure of the Johnson Street homeless shelter, several service providers detailed the challenges involved in getting people off the street and into permanent housing. While the city’s housing sprint resulted in dozens of shelter residents finding permanent or temporary housing, speaking with a handful of people on the day the Johnson Street shelter closed was a reminder of the varied circumstances and barriers unhoused people face. Even when people have access to more resources at the YWCA Missoula’s domestic violence shelter, securing housing is still a challenge.
Despite these barriers, many homeless service providers told me that Missoula is a generous community and that solutions are possible through ongoing support and collaboration.
From Amanda Eggert
Wolves and water were prominent themes in my 2025 coverage. In January, MTFP partnered with WyoFile to publish a type of oral history to recognize the 30-year anniversary of wolf reintroduction that allowed me to work with some of the talented journalists on the other side of the Montana-Wyoming border.
This summer, I used some of the water law expertise I’ve cultivated over the years to write about an (incredibly rare) enforcement action the state’s water-right regulator pursued against a luxury resort in Shields Valley that incensed ranchers when it started applying water historically used for agriculture to an in-progress golf course without first securing the required approvals. Ripple effects from that dispute are fascinating, and ongoing.
Finally, it’s been interesting to watch the Montana Supreme Court’s ruling in the Held v. Montana youth climate lawsuit (which justices issued almost exactly one year ago), surface in somewhat unexpected arenas, including a lawsuit that aims to protect streamflows in blue-ribbon fisheries and litigation related to wolf hunting and trapping regulations.
From Tom Lutey
The chaos that erupted in the Montana Senate on the very first day of the Legislature set the tone not only for the session, but for the entire year.
Republican leadership lost control of the body within minutes of gaveling into session, in large part for assigning Democratic minority leadership and Republican moderates to a never-before-seen committee that objecting lawmakers said had a questionable purpose.
The senators assigned to the committee, including Minority Leader Pat Flowers, D-Belgrade, and immediate past president Jason Ellswoth, R-Hamilton, whipped the 26 floor votes needed to get themselves assigned to committees dealing with the meatier subjects of the session: property taxes, Medicaid expansion, the state budget.
Once that voting bloc — all 18 Democrats and nine Republicans — was created, it became the functional majority of the Senate. That bloc partnered with like-minded Republicans and Democrats in the House to prevail on the big issues.
In the midst of all this, the Senate launched an ethics investigation into Ellsworth, resulting in his permanent ban from the Senate floor.
From Zeke Lloyd
Last year was my first reporting in Montana, about 1,500 miles from my hometown of Lithopolis, Ohio. Despite the distance between me and my provenance, I discovered powerful examples of familial connections during reporting trips around the state.
In central Montana, I wrote about a local, family-owned newspaper undeterred by a blaze that destroyed its building. In southwestern Montana, I reported on Mary Sturgeon’s “welcome home” party for her son, a Dillon resident pardoned by President Donald Trump for his actions on Jan. 6, 2025. Down the road in Deer Lodge, I investigated a parenting program at Montana State Prison that the state shuttered despite excess federal funds, and in nearby Anaconda, I explored the economic future of a tight-knit town in the wake of a mass shooting.
From Matt Hudson
Some of my favorite stories in 2025 featured people who do cool things and have called Great Falls home. This year, I interviewed an off-road rally team whose competition rig is also the vehicle of choice for picking up kids from school. I also talked to a Great Falls native about his team’s ascent of a 22,500-foot Himalayan mountain on a route that hadn’t previously been recorded.
On the historical front, I spoke to the family of Jim Loud Thunder Gopher, an Ojibwe man who lived at Hill 57 in 1920s Great Falls and was a towering Indigenous figure, both in stature and reputation. A stretch of highway was named for Loud Thunder Gopher earlier this year.
A Great Falls man was also confirmed as a United States attorney this year.
I’m proudest this year of my reporting on the Calumet oil refinery and its transformation into a facility that primarily produces biofuels. It took months of public information requests, interviews and reviews of permit documents to bring a fuller view of that facility’s impact on the local air quality and tax base.
In addition, all that reporting helped build a foundation for articles about the facility’s federal grant status, wastewater permit requests, unique tax exemptions and impacts to public budgets. As the city’s largest taxpayer and a major employer, the refinery is an important institution to cover.
Thanks to everyone for reading.