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Kansas has the same number of full-time opinion-section editors as it has United States senators. Clay Wirestone, of the Kansas Reflector , a statewide nonprofit news organization, is half of the former.

When he assumed his role, five years ago, Wirestone told me, he was shocked at what had become of local opinion writing in a state that produced William Allen White—who revolutionized the op-ed format—and can boast of a long, proud history of civic changemakers who made their voices heard through the press. So Wirestone dived into newspaper archives, long-forgotten books, and miles of microfilm to find out how the culture of opinion writing in Kansas has developed over the past century.…