Emily Bradbury, Executive Director of the Kansas Press Association1 discusses the challenges and opportunities facing Kansas newspapers today with Spencer Graves and Karl Brooks. 

Ms. Bradbury is also Secretary-Treasurer of the Kansas Newspaper Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit whose mission is "to preserve the legacy and to ensure and advance the prominence of Kansas newspapers and the communities they faithfully serve".2 Bradbury has been with the Kansas Press Association for 22 years and has held these positions since 2018-8-01. She also serves as co-chair of the Kansas Coalition for Open Government.3 And she sits on the boards of the Wellsville Community Library and the Kansas Historical Society Foundation.1 

She updates us on the current status of challenges to press freedom in Kansas including financial and legal.

Last August 11, local law enforcement raided the offices of the Marion County Record newspaper and homes of principals, confiscating cell phones, computers, financial and other files.4 Bradbury was called as it was beginning. She helped arrange national and international press coverage. The raid included searching the home of Joan Meyer, the 98-year-old co-owner of the Marion County Record. Bradbury called Ms. Meyer while the police were still in her home. She kept saying, "They can't do this. They think I'm stupid, Emily." Joan Meyer died the next day, partly as a result of the stress of having her home raided like that. 

Bradbury grew up in Haysville, a suburb of Wichita. She graduated from Washburn University in 2000 with a B.A. degree in History.

Copyright 2024, Emily Bradbury, Karl Brooks, Spencer Graves, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) 4.0 international license.



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Emily Bradbury, Executive Director, Kansas Press Association, https://kspress.com/about/kpa-staff-and-consultants/emily-bradbury, accessed 2024-07-21.

Kansas Newspaper Foundation IRS form 990 for 2021, https://apps.irs.gov/pub/epostcard/cor/480946013_202112_990_2023051121203506.pdf.

Emily Bradbury, Kansas Reflector, https://kansasreflector.com/author/emily-bradbury.

Section on "2023 police raid" in the Wikipedia article on the "Marion County Record".