Interview of John Marshall, Dave Ranney and Mike Shields by Jim McLean, July 30, 2025

In this 2025 oral history interview, Jim McLean explored with John Marshall, Dave Ranney, and Mike Shields some of the issues they covered as Statehouse reporters and how news coverage has changed over the last fifty years. The three reporters, who all worked at Harris News, describe providing in-depth coverage, such as Marshall’s descriptions of school finance debates, Shields’ work on Kansas water issues, and Ranney’s articles on social services issues that impacted Kansans’ lives. Marshall noted that through Ranney’s reporting on social issues, “we found that for the first time we could raise the consciousness of almost the entire community of Kansas. Made this an issue. Made this something that people talked about and were concerned with, especially legislators.” They shared their thoughts on how Harris News made “Kansans aware of Kansas” and the importance of covering local stories about local people and not just Topeka, Kansas City, and Wichita. They noted that today “we’ve lost the quality control of the information being presented out there.” They also recognized Dale Dennis, formerly at the Kansas Department of Education, and Richard "Dick" Ryan, former Director of the Kansas Legislative Research Department, as sources of detailed information to ensure that Kansans received accurate and reliable news from the Statehouse. A printable copy of the transcript of this interview can be accessed at https://ksoralhistory.org. A native Kansan, John Marshall is a retired newspaper editor who covered Kansas government politics, and culture for more than 50 years. He is a member of the Kansas Newspaper Hall of Fame. Marshall graduated from the University of Kansas with a degree in journalism in 1969. In 1970 he went to work for the Salina Journal. In 1974, Marshall was assigned to Topeka as Kansas Correspondent for the Harris News Service. Dave Ranney is a Kansas native who graduated from Wichita East High School and the University of Kansas (1972). He began a career in journalism after working several years in social services. He worked as a reporter at the Axtell-Bern Reporter, a weekly newspaper, then The Neodesha Sun-Register, and later the Hillsboro Star-Journal, before starting at the Harris News Service in 1984. Ranney left Harris to join the staff of the Wichita Eagle in 1989 where he worked for a decade. He left the Eagle to work at the Lawrence Journal-World where he reported from 1999-2006. In 2006, Ranney began working for the non-profit KHI (Kansas Health Institute) News retiring from that position in 2015. Mike Shields graduated from Wichita State University in 1983 with degrees in journalism and history. Prior to graduation, he began working as a general assignment reporter at the Ark Valley News, a weekly in Valley Center, Kansas. From there he went to the weekly Marion Record. Shields’ served as publisher, editor and part owner of Wichita City Life magazine, until taking on consulting jobs in Wichita and for the Abilene Reflector-Chronicle newspaper. In 1989, he began as a Statehouse correspondent for Harris News Service in Topeka. Shields specialized in investigative reporting. After nearly a decade at the Statehouse, Shields moved to the Lawrence Journal-World. After a brief stint as a reporter there, he became city editor before accepting the position of managing editor at the Kansas Health Institute (KHI) News Service in Topeka. KHI News was the first non-profit news organization in the region. Shields retired from the news business in 2014. This interview was conducted by the Kansas Oral History Project, Inc. (KOHP), a non-profit organization (501(c)(3)) that records, transcribes, and makes available to the public, oral histories of various aspects of life in Kansas. KOHP is supported by grants and donations, including grants from Humanities Kansas, Evergy, and ITC Great Plains. KOHP does not charge for non-commercial use of the oral histories it collects. Suggested citation: Marshall, John, Mike Shields, and Dave Raney (July 30, 2025) interviewed by Jim McLean. Video file of an oral history interview conducted for the Kansas Oral History Project, Inc. Retrieved from    • Video  . ***** The appearance of any advertisement on this channel does not constitute an endorsement of any product or service nor does it reflect any official position taken by the Kansas Oral History Project, Inc. Except where otherwise noted, The Kansas Oral History Collection © 2021 by Kansas Oral History Project, Inc. is licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International. The recording, transcript, summary, and biographical sketch associated with this video may be used in accordance with this license. If you have questions about licensing the use of this material, contact us using our online form at https://ksoralhistory.org/contact/.