Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
A recently introduced bill could have far-reaching impact on the U.S. sugar industry, including American Crystal Sugar, a farmer-owned cooperative that locked out 1,300 Midwest workers on Aug. 1.
The chairman for Herman Cain’s Iowa effort says the campaign “relied more on the word of farmers than Washington regulators” in deciding to run an ad containing claims the Environmental Protection Agency says are false.
The Iowa Senate will remain under the control of a slim 26-25 Democratic majority when it reconvenes in January 2012.
Though I know The Beanwalker is touted as nothing more than a conservative political news site to begin with, I’d be negligent in my duties as media critic if I didn’t spend at least a little time on the site’s banner “interview” with U.S. Rep. Tom Latham (R-Ames), published today.
The “interview,” which stretches on past 900 words, quotes Latham saying only four things. The first quote is Latham saying he is frustrated, and the other three are about how Latham’s opposition to the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) made him a hero.
Nowhere in the nine-paragraph section about TARP is any mention of the growing evidence that suggests that the country’s financial sector is actually stabilizing, though that would have been a logical policy question to ask about.
I won’t begrudge a conservative operative for writing a puff piece about a Republican member of congress, but I will criticize a story that spends more time discussing napkins and drink specials than quoting the subject of the “interview,” and that’s what this story did:
A table setting for twenty. Servers scrambling to get the silverware folded into the jet-black napkins, waiting for the first customers to arrive. Floor-to-ceiling windows that let the fleeting daylight accentuate the salvaged art-deco doors hung from the ceiling overhead, forcing a gleam in the years-worn colors of the forgotten treasures.
Just another night at the recently-established Alba restaurant in Des Moines.
The site, part of a resurgent Des Moines East Village, was preparing for the routine – hoping patrons would be lured in by the $5 martinis at the bar, or by the prime, freshly-cut Iowa beef cooked to order.
Yet, something was brewing, as soon the table-setting was littered with one simple flyer that blared: “For America’s Republican Majority,” and a place card to direct attendees where to sit.
The one piece of news in the story — that Latham is stepping up fundraising efforts for his Political Action Committee, which he will use to support Republican candidates for state and federal offices — is without much context. There are no examples of candidates Latham is recruiting and no estimates about how much money his PAC has raised.
Perhaps those estimates depend on how much favorable attention the PAC gets from Republican bloggers. (I’d bet it will be sponsoring a few of them soon.)
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