Stories

Des Moines Register columnist David Yepsen is expected to be announced as the new director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, the Register reported this morning.
A press conference is scheduled for 1 p.m. at Southern Illinois University.
The Southern Illinoisan newspaper reported that Yepsen’s answering machine said he would [...]

The changes are coming fast and furious at the “Newspaper Iowa Depends Upon.”
Des Moines Register Publisher Laura Hollingsworth informed readers in a column published Friday that the paper will be shedding some pages and combining some sections in an attempt to cut costs.

In yet another move to cut costs at the ailing media giant, Gannett Co. Inc. has ordered all staffers to take a one-week unpaid forlough at some point in the first quarter to save money and prevent more immediate job cuts.
The Des Moines Register, which is owned by Gannett, reported on its Web site that [...]

Former Des Moines Register Washington correspondent Jane Norman is once again writing for an Iowa audience.
Norman has been hired as a columnist for IowaPolitics.com, a non-partisan, for-profit political news service that aggregates news and publishes a daily newsletter. Norman will be writing a column entitled “A View From D.C.,” where she will try to put [...]

Gov. Chet Culver has once again refused a request by The Des Moines Register to turn over documents, this time e-mails surrounding the governor’s response to the unexpected death of a resident at a state-run home for the disabled.
Culver’s office is calling the e-mails “draft documents,” which it says aren’t required to be disclosed under [...]

“Everyone you talk to [at the Des Moines Register] is nervous, is scared, is trying to figure out what’s going to happen next, and unfortunately a lot of the economic news we’re getting isn’t very promising,” Hollingsworth said.

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 [...]

Shane Goodman, publisher of the Des Moines alternative newsweekly Cityview, announced this week that what was thought to be a one time arrangement for fired Des Moines Register editorial cartoonist Brian Duffy to publish his parting shot at his former employer has become a regular feature in the paper.

Fired Des Moines Register cartoonist Brian Duffy has published the farewell piece his former employer never gave him a chance to show to the public.
In this week’s issue of the Des Moines alternative newsweekly Cityview, Duffy was given a full page to publish a cartoon of his choice, according to the paper’s editor and publisher [...]

Gannett Co. CEO Craig Dubow told a Wall Street media conference that his company, which owns The Des Moines Register and Iowa City Press-Citizen, is prepared to cut even more newspaper jobs in 2009, according to Jim Hopkins at Gannett Blog.
Dubow made the comments at the UBS Investment Bank 36th Annual Global Media Conference in [...]