Midstory

12/12/2025

For two years, Toledo was crowned a top destination for real estate speculation, but the city’s housing market is threatening to leave working people behind as rates of homelessness continue to rise. 🏠📈 In this , fellow Janek Schaller delves into the numbers.
🔗 Read the full story via link in bio!
Reporting by Janek Schaller, video editing by Evan Blenko for Midstory.
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11/12/2025

Frank Gehry, one of the most important architects of our time, passed away during Dec. 2025, but his works have shaped Midwestern cities. Swipe to see his works in the heartland.

📸 Images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

09/12/2025

The fastest growing sport in America finds a new home in Toledo, Ohio 🥒🏓

Pickleball is sweeping across the country and taking over hundreds of tennis courts in the process. The Glass City has welcomed the sport by converting a relic of its industrial past into a family entertainment complex for the future. As part of a greater riverfront revitalization effort, Metroparks Toledo helped convert the storage facility to house nine courts, a rock climbing wall and a restaurant.

🔗 Full story via link in bio!

08/12/2025

In Oberlin, residents have reimagined an architectural oddity as a vibrant cultural hub. Once used to power street lamps, the gasholder building now connects the town’s Black abolitionist history with present-day arts and cultural programming centering the Black experience.

Watch the documentary:

In Oberlin, a group of residents rallies around an architectural oddity, reimagining it as a vibrant cultural hub. Once used to power street lamps, the gasholder building now connects the town’s Black abolitionist history with present-day arts and cultural programming centering the Black experienc...

08/12/2025

In this week's , we're heading to what might be Nebraska's most significant landmark: Chimney Rock — not the North Carolinian village! Known for its distinctive and naturally occurring chimney shape, the structure is nearly 5,000 feet above sea level and was a crucial navigational landmark for Westward travelers in centuries past. Notably, Chimney Rock was a key landmark within the Oregon Trail, a historic trail used by westward pioneers in the mid-1800s. More westbound emigrants took note of this landmark than any other landmark along this trail, and that speaks to its remarkable importance. The landmark is today coupled with a museum of its own just a two minute drive away, detailing the rich history of the site and commemorating those past who encountered the landmark on their journey.

📸 Images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Written and compiled by Siyeon Lee for Midstory.

05/12/2025

If you’ve ever wanted to see a HUGE ping pong paddle, now’s your chance. 🏓🥁🧺 In this , intern Amber Zhao takes us on a tour of the "world's largest" in Ohio.
🔗 Read the full story via link in bio!
Reporting by Amber Zhao, video editing by Dea Kukeli and Evan Blenko for Midstory.
Ready to stay connected with stories coming out of the Midwest? 🌾📖 Do you believe in empowering, uplifting, and supporting the Midwest narrative? 🙌 Subscribe FREE to our weekly newsletter for direct access to our film reviews, video podcasts, thought pieces and more. Click on the link in our bio to subscribe.

03/12/2025

You’ve probably heard about local papers closing across the country. But things are looking a little sunnier in South Dakota, where four newspapers were saved from closure this summer despite serious challenges.

In early August, Benjamin Chase, the editor of The Huron Daily Plainsman in Huron, South Dakota, received a strange phone call. It was from a former editor of his, who asked him if the paper, known to locals as The Plainsman, was closing. As far as Chase knew, it wasn’t. They’d been printing pap...

03/12/2025

The future of American manufacturing is Cleveland, Ohio. 🦾

MAGNET is a non-profit that consults for manufacturers across the region, but they’re also educating the next generation. Their new headquarters welcomes hundreds of students a year for hands-on activities that see them welding, 3D printing, and fabricating.

28/11/2025

Only a handful of historic arcades — the shopping mall’s 19th-century predecessor — still exist in the United States. Three of them are located on Euclid Avenue in downtown Cleveland, including the splendid five-story complex known simply as the Arcade. Despite various socioeconomic hurdles throughout the 20th century, the Arcade remains a staple of the city’s downtown scene.

In the heart of downtown Cleveland lies a seemingly inconspicuous, mid-rise brick structure boasting a grand title on two entrances: “THE ARCADE.” Upon entering, streetgoers are met with an extravagant, five-story glass atrium. Wrought-iron railings run an intricate border along each level. Garg...

27/11/2025

The GREATEST rivalry in North American sports started with a war ... in Toledo. 🏈 ⭕〽️

“The Game” is more than a regular matchup — it’s the greatest North American sports rivalry. But in Toledo, where border tension started the interstate conflict, the Ohio State-Michigan rivalry carries special weight for two athletes who have played on both sides and returned home.

Reporting by Janek Schaller and Joshua Repp, video by Evan Blenko for Midstory.

🔗 Read the full story via link in bio!

27/11/2025

That cranberry sauce you're eating? It may well have come from Warrens, Wisc., where a 50-mile highway trail will take you across rolling marshes flooded with millions of floating red gems.

“I don’t really need to go to school, because I’m going to be a cranberry farmer.” For some who grew up on cranberry farms in Wisconsin, taking on the family business was a no-brainer. Children are born and raised on the cranberry marshes that stretch across 21,000 acres of the state, mainta...

27/11/2025

The pie has been woven into the fabric of American culture since its earliest days.

For settlers in New England and later the pioneers to the Midwest, the pie was a practical, no-frills type of meal.

“It was survival food,” Catherine Lambrecht said in a presentation to the Culinary Historians of Chicago. “When they ran out of food in the winter, those dried apples… You could take 20 bushels of fresh apples and compact them to about three bushels dried. That was breakfast, lunch and dinner for months on end.”

Families would soak their apples in the evening and put them into pie crusts in the morning. These pies were nothing close to the sweet desserts we know today. The apple filling contained no sugar or cinnamon, and the flour was rough — sometimes to the point that hungry mouths would eat only the pie’s interior.

🔗 Full story:

It’s a cool Sunday evening in late 1960s Chicago. Catherine Lambrecht and her sisters race up the stairs to their grandmother’s apartment. Their first destination? The kitchen. Having verified the dinner menu for the evening, they move on to her back porch where the desserts are kept. There is a...