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Matter Independent news nonprofit serving those seeking new and challenging perspectives on issues that matter.

Matter News is your independent news featuring challenging perspectives on issues that matter: community, culture, and overlooked voices of Columbus. We serve civically-minded Columbus residents who are underserved by the current media landscape. Our Mission:
- To empower people to be informed community members through innovative, investigative journalism covering the most pressing issues affecting central Ohio. Our Vision:
- To inspire equitable and sustainable community engagement in the greater central Ohio region.

“You know, the world has a way of overlooking people,” said Pastor Peter Borhauer of First United Methodist Church in do...
09/17/2026

“You know, the world has a way of overlooking people,” said Pastor Peter Borhauer of First United Methodist Church in downtown Newark, Ohio. “If you don’t fit whatever the expectations are, no one cares.”

He was speaking to a knowing crowd of 50 or so people gathered in the church basement to memorialize a friend named Daisy, a loved one who died on the streets of this small city. The room is filled entirely with church volunteers, outreach workers, and people who are unhoused or have been. The man across from me, “Mm-hmms,” in affirmation.

God sees us, Pastor Peter continued, sees who we truly are – not just our circumstances. It’s a message that resonates with those gathered, some of whom, like Daisy, have struggled with the consequences of our modern world: homelessness, substance use, or issues with mental health.

New from Jack Shuler.

A vigil for an unhoused community member who recently died in Newark served as a call to not look away.

In recent weeks, Henry Hess has assisted in packing up his studio at Chromedge, a process that has involved the artist t...
09/16/2026

In recent weeks, Henry Hess has assisted in packing up his studio at Chromedge, a process that has involved the artist touching each drawing as it gets put in a bin, and then sometimes reopening the bin and repeating the process, as if to assure himself that everything is still there and still safe.

“It’s really been these last two weeks as we’ve taken stuff out, but he struggles, he really struggles,” said Henry’s dad, Tom Hess. “Even just now when we were at Kroger, he kept saying, ‘Big studio, big studio.’ He comes in and sees that it’s different, he sees that it’s changing. And we try to keep it positive, but it’s going to be tough.”

Faced with a rent increase of more than 30 percent, the Hess family opted to move on from the artist’s creative home of the last eight years. And while the next steps remain uncertain, they stressed that Henry would maintain a presence in Franklinton. ‘We’re not going anywhere,’ Sophia Hess ...

Fant first became aware of Thurber House in her early 20s while living in Columbus, recalling how she was invited to ser...
09/15/2026

Fant first became aware of Thurber House in her early 20s while living in Columbus, recalling how she was invited to serve as a guest artist in a writing class that left her briefly questioning her own credentials. “I was like, ‘Hi, I’m Barbara. I’m a poet and I write and perform.’ … And these people were younger than me, and they were like, ‘I’m such and such, and I’m on my third novel,’” Fant said, and laughed. “And I remember being like, ‘You’re 14! What do you mean?’’

In the years that followed, Fant continued to maintain a connection to the space, teaching journaling and poetry classes, taking part in Poetry Out Loud, reading in authors’ series events, and even serving for a time on the nonprofit’s board of directors. But while she always felt welcomed, Fant said she was continually surprised by how Thurber House remained an unknown quantity even within local writing circles, recalling how she would talk about the organization at poetry slams or open mics and be met with blank stares. “And I’d be like, ‘How do you not know about Thurber House?’” she said. “It’s always been this tucked away, sweet space, and it’s like, yo, we should all know about this.”

The poet and newly minted executive director of the literary nonprofit will take part in a community reception welcoming her to the role on Thursday, Sept. 17.

On two occasions in “Ice Cream Land,” the new documentary from Columbus artist David Denniston, Ricky “Ice Cream” Jackso...
09/15/2026

On two occasions in “Ice Cream Land,” the new documentary from Columbus artist David Denniston, Ricky “Ice Cream” Jackson breaks down his approach to storytelling.

“If you want to hear fantasy, Ice Cream will give you fantasy. If you want to hear reality, Ice Cream will give you reality,” he says. “It’s not if Ice Cream can handle it. It’s if you can handle it. That’s the question.”

In telling Jackson’s tale from his early years in Memphis through the decades that he has lived as a colorfully outsized presence within Columbus, most of it spent on the South Side, Denniston adheres to this pledge, balancing gut-wrenching biographical detail with more surrealistic visual flourishes, including one scene in which Ice Cream dances in front of a wall of illuminated spotlights. (Animations for the film were done by Frank Lawson, with musician Eric Rollin handling the voiceover narration.)

“Ricky has his favorite sayings, his favorite poems, and I was like, wow, this movie is kind of like that, and we go in and out of his mind. And so, I tried to build off his poetry and create these stop-motion animations to play off,” said Denniston, who joined Jackson for an early September interview at his Franklinton art studio ahead of the public premiere of “Ice Cream Land,” which screens at the Lincoln Theatre at 8 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 17. “And I think that helped balance it, because when I showed it to people, I was worried it was too heavy. … And I tried to keep it to where it’s something that’s still fun to watch, even though it’s got serious subject matter in there, too.”

More than two decades in the works, the new documentary from artist David Denniston lovingly traces the life and experiences of Ricky ‘Ice Cream’ Jackson, who will be on hand when the film premieres at the Lincoln Theatre on Thursday, Sept. 17.

The songs on Dollbaum’s lovely sophomore album, Birds of Paradise, released earlier this year via Dear Life, are more in...
09/14/2026

The songs on Dollbaum’s lovely sophomore album, Birds of Paradise, released earlier this year via Dear Life, are more intimately shaped by his adolescent memories of the state, and more specifically the ways its wilderness existed amid the expanding reach of humans. Throughout, his narrators can be found chasing rabbits across burned out fields, praying coyotes won’t feast on their house cats, or traversing thick, shaded mangrove groves under the watch of vibrantly colored birds.

“And that’s how it felt growing up, because I grew up outside the city, where it was pretty rural for a minute,” Dollbaum said. “As a kid, a snake would end up in the house, or there would be an alligator in the garage. Nature was just always kind of encroaching, because [that area] had been untouched for so long. And I guess it’s just me thinking about that time, where you’d be worried about a coyote because you were the ones encroaching on their space.”

If you missed Thomas Dollbaum at Nelsonville earlier this summer, there's a chance to correct that at Rumba tonight.

The Florida-born, New Orleans-based singer and songwriter performs at Nelsonville Music Festival this weekend.

Frustrated transit riders have taken to social media in recent months to complain about scheduled buses that simply neve...
09/14/2026

Frustrated transit riders have taken to social media in recent months to complain about scheduled buses that simply never show up. Those complaints prompted an August post by COTA apologizing for “missed trips, long waits, [and] last-minute cancellations” and calling fixing service “our immediate top priority.”

In July, the Columbus Dispatch reported “5-10 missed or delayed trips daily,” quoting COTA director of media and public relations, Jeff Pullin.

But new records obtained by Matter News show the scale of the issue has been far greater than previously reported. Between Jan. 1 and Aug. 31, the number of missed COTA trips totaled 32,056, an average of almost 132 missed trips per day. The same week that the Dispatch reported “5-10 missed or delayed trips daily,” records show COTA actually missed 1,696 trips just between Monday and Friday, not to mention delays. (COTA defines a trip as the bus traveling one length of the route, from start to end.)

New from Larkin Cleland.

New records obtained by Matter News show that between Jan. 1 and Aug. 31 the number of missed COTA trips totaled 32,056, an average of almost 132 missed trips per day. The agency placed the majority of the blame on an in-house fleet maintenance issue and said it is taking steps to correct the proble...

The Cringe live events calendar at Matter News has been updated with shows through Sunday, Sept. 27.
09/13/2026

The Cringe live events calendar at Matter News has been updated with shows through Sunday, Sept. 27.

The Cringe live events calendar at Matter News was updated on Sunday, Sept. 13, and includes listings through Sunday, Sept. 27. Visit Cringe.com here for four full weeks of listings and send your Columbus music related events to [email protected]. SEPTEMBER 13, 2026 Streaming/Online EventsSun 13: Co...

Witness the monochrome, orange-hued “Greetings From,” which doesn’t immediately overwhelm the senses in spite of its mas...
09/11/2026

Witness the monochrome, orange-hued “Greetings From,” which doesn’t immediately overwhelm the senses in spite of its massive size. Closer inspection only heightens the sense of mystery to the canvas, which depicts a woman in a boat in a scene reads as the aftermath of a flood, the water dotted with floating objects that include snow globes and a handful of duck decoys. Over the woman’s eyes, the words “Greetings From” are painted, a nod, Stull said, to the generic murals present in many cities and towns that feature sanitized, anodyne scenes.

“And there always this idyllic scene or some reproduced concept that’s just very trite and doesn’t explore the specificity or uniqueness of a community,” said Stull, who within that began to see the phrase as a metaphor for covering up certain realities, his painting reflecting on, among other things, the denialism of the climate crisis even as catastrophic floods become more of the norm.

But there also exists within the exhibition a more deeply personal throughline, with paintings of various family members, including his wife and children. “Frontier,” meanwhile, is a portrait of his maternal grandfather, a man who as a child he viewed as “a charming, charismatic guy,” and who later emerged as a more complicated figure when Stull learned more about the elder’s relationship with his daughter, the artist’s mother. Among other details, the portrait includes an outline of the old man set slightly askew from the main image, signifying the aspects of his being that remain unknowable to Stull.

With his latest collection, on view at Sarah Gormley Gallery beginning today (Friday, Sept. 11), the Columbus artist hopes to entice viewers to linger a little longer in his world.

The film resists the urge to delve into the backstories of the people living at Wood Street, with Creighton explaining t...
09/10/2026

The film resists the urge to delve into the backstories of the people living at Wood Street, with Creighton explaining that the sob stories that tend to make up the bulk of mainstream coverage of the issue held little appeal for her. “It’s always like, ‘How did you become homeless?’” she said. “Like we need all of this information before we can become empathetic to them.”

As the documentary unfolds, however, peoples’ personalities emerge, and in particular those of Wood Street residents John Janosko and LaMonte Ford, whom Creighton homed in on early as dynamic voices. At the time the director started filming, Janosko had already been making videos about the camp’s plight and posting them to social media, positioning him as a thoughtful, if soft-spoken leader. Ford, in contrast, wears his heart on his sleeve, his advocacy existing almost as an exposed nerve.

In one moderated conversation between Wood Street residents and neighboring community members, for instance, Ford engages in an emotionally complex back and forth with one woman that in a span of 90 seconds manages to cover the resentment some in the area feel toward the unhoused, the desperation that comes hand in hand with living on the street, and the sense that a broken system is leaving everyone somehow worse off. The dialogue ends with the two embracing, both of them in tears. “You guys are pushing us to where? Where are we going to go?” Ford says. “We’re not trying to. … We’re trying to help y’all,” the woman replies.

The new documentary from California journalist and filmmaker Caron Creighton screens at the Drexel Theatre this weekend as part of Cinema Columbus.

We’ve made it harder for ourselves. What other country has abandoned so much of its transportation infrastructure? A cen...
09/10/2026

We’ve made it harder for ourselves. What other country has abandoned so much of its transportation infrastructure? A century ago, Columbus had eight regional interurban rail lines. Ohio is full of unused and underused rail lines – and others that have been removed, bulldozing our past to spite our future.

What will it take for us to realize that adding highway lanes does not ease traffic in the long run?

New from Brian Williams.

Our policies suggest a willingness to spend any amount to add lanes and bigger (towering!) interchanges for major highways, while transit spending is too often regarded as frivolous.

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