Daily Digest
Ty's Take The frost that took out thousands of apples across western Montana this spring is the kind of loss that doesn't make the evening news but gets talked about at every coffee shop from here to Missoula—farmers who've spent years building something
Daily Digest
Ty's Take When thermometers hit records and funding gets tight, you find out who's serious about building something versus who's just collecting a paycheck. The new director at the economic development office walked in knowing both things would be true—the heat's
Daily Digest
Ty's Take The obits page tells you something the business section won't—this region's still losing the generation that built it. Three names today, ranging from their seventies into their nineties, the kind of lives that spanned from when Billings was half this size
Daily Digest
Ty's Take There's something worth sitting with in today's paper—a paleo artist down in Miles City capturing what looks like the last moments of a dinosaur, a kid from here heading to St. Louis to speak her mind, and meanwhile we're
Daily Digest
Ty's Take The data center fight keeps getting messier—first Missoula pumps the brakes with a moratorium, then Quantica throws its weight behind a county lawsuit that's got people fired up. Meanwhile, the rest of us are trying to figure out what this boom actually means
Daily Digest
Ty's Take There's something that settles in a community when sentences get handed down for crimes against children—a kind of collective exhale mixed with the knowledge that justice, even when it comes, doesn't undo anything. The hundred-year sentence in Helena Valley doesn&
Daily Digest
Ty's Take Legionnaire's disease at a downtown hotel, a data center question heading to court before voters get their say, animal control caught in a budget squeeze—this is the kind of week that reminds you Billings isn't just a regional hub, it'
Daily Digest
Ty's Take The West End water treatment plant creeping toward the finish line says something about this city that doesn't always get said out loud—we're still growing, still betting on ourselves, still willing to spend the money to handle what comes next. That
Daily Digest
Ty's Take The Yellowstone County sheriff's office is asking for more money again, and this time the numbers actually add up—they're hiring, not padding. That's the kind of budget request worth taking seriously in a county that's grown as
Daily Digest
Ty's Take A woman out in western Montana got taken by people who knew exactly how to sound trustworthy over a screen, and now she's doing the hard work of telling other people what to watch for—which is the kind of thing that matters more
Daily Digest
Ty's Take There's something about a thin news day in early July that reminds you what actually holds a town together. The obituaries tell you who built this place—the ones who came here to work in the refineries, who ran businesses on Minnesota Avenue, who
Daily Digest
Ty's Take When a man with means decides to bet on the survival of local newspapers, it's worth asking why—and worth listening to the answer. David Hoffmann's millions flowing back into the papers that serve towns like ours isn't charity so