Stories

It can’t be a good sign when the governor announces he will travel across the country to support the state’s most popular football team and the first question asked is whether he will be paying his own way.
But such is the case for Gov. Chet Culver, as he had to make a point of [...]

It’s a sad chapter that local historians will be loath to record. Several newspapers that have served east-central Iowa communities since the late 1800s are coming to an end.
Marengo Publishing Corp. and Poweshiek Publishing, companies under Gannett’s large umbrella, have published three weekly advertisers, seven weekly newspapers and a monthly magazine for several years. The [...]

In a Tuesday press conference, Culver announced a special task force that recommended nine new state employees.

Perception is reality, and a good example of that old adage is a recent teleconference about President-elect Barack Obama’s stimulus plan involving the mayors of Des Moines and Cedar Rapids.
Both The Des Moines Register’s Jason Pulliam and Radio Iowa’s O. Kay Henderson were listening in, but when it came time to write a story, both [...]

Iowa ranked 35th in the country in total properties with foreclosure filings for November. One in every 2,529 Iowa housing units received a foreclosure filing during the month, earning the Hawkeye State a 38th-place ranking among the states.

The escalating conflict between Israelis and Palestinians in Gaza has directly impacted at least one Iowan already.  Cedar Rapids Imam Ahmed Elkhaldy said he has lost three members of his extended family in Israeli airstrikes.

The exclusive story is no longer the exclusive domain of the traditional media. In many cases, it’s the small, independent media that are breaking stories and driving the news these days.

Chuck Hurley, former statesman and current president of the Iowa Family Policy Center, reflected on the past year in an e-mail to supporters today. Above all else, it seems, Hurley is thankful for journalists.
According to an independent media monitoring service, IFPC’s television media presence reached an audience of over 5 million viewers this year. News [...]

Since U.S. Magistrate Judge Jon Scoles handed down his decision that Sholom Rubashkin, former Agriprocessors chief executive, should remain in federal custody pending a hearing on various criminal charges, the Jewish community throughout the nation has openly questioned if at least a portion of the judge’s argument amounted to discrimination.
On Monday night, the final night [...]

The Des Moines Register swung for the fences in today’s front page, above-the-fold story about Sen. Tom Harkin’s efforts to secure federal funding for a sewage treatment facility for the Agriprocessors meatpacking plant in Postville four years ago, but it is not clear that Harkin actually did anything wrong.