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.
A company that has made its mark by identifying, packaging and managing content created by other bloggers will soon be headquartered in the Des Moines area.
“I’ve missed the Midwest almost since I left,” said David Mastio, editor of BlogNetNews. “I miss the goofy liberalism of Iowa City and going to Hawks games. I miss the landscape, the Amana Colonies, Millstream Wheat and being pissed with the Register. Dutch Letters once a year is not enough. Virginia doesn’t have winter. I never had to drive by a house flying the confederate battle flag when I lived in Iowa — you still find them in Virginia.”
Mastio, a graduate of the University of Iowa’s School of Journalism, partnered with Tyler Abbot, another UI graduate and Iowa native, in developing the site aggregator and building it to be a one-stop shop for blog readers who want to locate state-based or topic-based content. Mastio left Iowa to pursue an internship with Knight-Ridder’s Washington bureau, and was then hired as a member of USA Today’s editorial board.
One of the perks of building an online presence like BlogNetNews is that the developers have the option of living anywhere they wish. Mastio and Abbot, citing an opportunity to live closer to family, jointly made the decision to move the headquarters from Virginia to the Hawkeye State. But don’t look for the duo to be content with what they’ve already built.
“Once I get to Iowa, I am going to keep building BNN, launch an Iowa news site and, hopefully, teach a class at Drake’s j-school in entrepreneurial journalism,” Mastio said. “I am hoping to find some Iowans to invest in the local news site and that will be my main project in December and January.”
Consumers of BNN will be glad to know that the move will result in no down-time for the aggregator. Mastio and Abbot intend to continue use of North Carolina-based servers at 3essentials.
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