“Between 2004 and 2019, a total of 2,100 papers across the country – all but 70 of which were weeklies – shut down. This substantial loss of community newspapers left almost half of the counties in the country with just one newspaper – usually a weekly. Furthermore, in 2019 a total of 171 counties in the country did not have a paper at all. And according to the Pew Research Center between 2008 and 2020, total U.S. newsroom employment has dropped 26%. The upshot of these numbers is that news deserts are emerging across the nation, and this dearth of community news threatens democracy.
This video is part one of a conversation between three community journalists in western Iowa seeking a solution to the financial crisis facing locally-owned newspapers and the communities they serve. Host Kyle Munson, president of the Western Iowa Journalism Foundation, interviews Lorena López, editor of LaPrensa Iowa, Doug Burns, publisher and editor of the Carroll Times Herald, and Art Cullen, editor of the Storm Lake Times.
The Western Iowa Journalism Foundation is a 501c3 nonprofit organization established in 2020. Our mission is to educate, inform and engage residents throughout Western Iowa by supporting community journalism to ensure long-term access to accurate local news and investigative reporting.
Once again Robert Reich hits the nail on the head concerning the REAL causes behind our problems. At the bottom line of nearly every problem in this country is money. Imbalance in wealth and income ripples throughout the economy causing huge instability.
Instability is the climate that spawns populist authoritarians like Trump. Video is about 5 minutes:
While the Republicans will be using their usual media blitz to try to convince Americans that our economic woes are caused by Democrats, nothing could be further from the truth. We did not get in this situation in 9 months. Rather a 40 plus year onslaught against our economic system by the wealthy and their puppet politicians has brought us to this point.
So sorry I was out last week. Actually the computer decided to take the day off on Thursday. When this happened I was able to make what should have been a relatively minor problem into a crisis. Good old American know how!
So glad Fall is finally here. This summer was a real difficult one for us. Now with the cool air and the shorter days it is starting to look like we can finally take a few deep breathes. Plus we have the season of ghosts coming up from Halloween to New Year’s Day. That always helps to lighten the burdens.
Here is hoping the Dems can bet their infrastructure bills passed and get this country headed in the right direction once again. And now for a fun fall video:
Today’s quiz will have some Latino history questions and maybe a couple on the season of fall.
A) What evangelical host of “The 700 Club” announced Friday that he will be stepping down after 60 years?
B) Merck announced last week that it has an an anti-viral that is effective against what current dread disease?
C) The Iowa legislature will hold a special session beginning Tuesday to take up what long delayed matter?
D) The first Monday of October (tomorrow) is the traditional day that what group gets back together in Washington?
E) Who was the first Hispanic Housing Secretary for the US?
F) Merchants are already warning that what might be a bit leaner this year?
G) Rohit Shopra was confirmed Friday as the head of what bureau that Elizabeth Warren conceived and Trump tried to kill?
H) With assaults on staff tripling, Cox Hospital in Branson, MO. is giving staff members what device to aid in their security?
I) Is fall associated with the earth’s distance to the sun?
J) As Chuck Grassleyruns for an 8th term as senator from Iowa, he is being primaries. Who is his primary opponent?
K) October 1, 1908. What “universal car” went on sale that day?
L) What very Republican representative admitted on live tv that she was “wrong in opposing gay marriage.”?
M) What Supreme Court justice grew up on a housing project in the Bronx, New York?
N) What groups of elected officials have requested help from the Biden administration as their meetings grow more tense due to anti-mask protestors?
O) What form of tourism brings in big bucks especially for New England states?
P) When it came to crunch time what vital monetary tool was extended for a couple of months just a day before it would expire?
Q) Military generals appeared before a congressional committee to answer questions about what recent event?
R) What retail giant announced they would hire 150,000 workers ahead of the holiday season this year?
S) Squeaky wheels get the grease. What senators had meetings with President Biden over the infrastructure bills?
T) Who sued to stop the release of White House records concerning the January 6th insurrection?
Q. How can the GOP keep sacrificing their own voters to Red Covid?
A. They’ve realized they don’t need voters to win elections anymore. – John Fugelsang
There must be some kind of confluence of the heavens today. A daily double for those who care about humanity.
Iowa City will be hosting a very belated Gay Pride celebration starting at noon today, continuing until 11 tonight. This will include a parade kicking off at noon and lasting until approximately 2PM at which time the protest against the Texas anti-abortion laws start at the Ped Mall. A schedule of events can be found here:
The Women’s March is being held all across the country in response to the horrible anti-abortion bill in Texas that was allowed to become law by a seemingly conspiring Supreme Court. We had a listing of the marches in Iowa yesterday. You can find them here:
Remember as you attend these events to wear a mask. If you haven’t been vaccinated yet, today would be a great day to do that and set yourself free from the scourge of the pandemic.
It should come as no surprise that Iowa’s Republicans Thursday voted to shut down the government by voting against extending the debt ceiling. The reasoning that Republicans have for using the debt ceiling as a hostage is not logical. Also using the debt ceiling as a hostage scares financial markets and puts the US in danger of defaulting which would cause a world wide financial panic.
So the party of so-called “financial responsibility” is once again acting like a drunk uncle who refuses to pay the debts that HE ran up. Based on yet another financial scare brought on by the Republican Party we would have to rate their financial acumen as a Zero on a scale of 1 to 10.
It is shameful. Grassley has been a Party hack on debt ceiling votes since it was first used as a weapon during the Clinton days. “Gotta stop the Dems spending” is his old mantra. Yet anyone who follows the nitty-gritty of budgets and politics know that the Democratic Party has been the fiscally responsible party forever.
When FDR was rolling out the New Deal, programs were paid for with only what would now be a relatively small amount of debt. That was true of Medicare and Medicaid and other of LBJ’s Great Society programs. The guy who really rolled up the debt was Republican Saint Ronald Reagan. He rolled it to over $3T and the dam was burst.
Bush the first said “No New taxes” and rolled up a couple of Trillion more in only four years. Clinton came in and over eight years was able to actually reduce the debt. Clinton was paying it off at the pace of a half a trillion dollars a year. Had Al gore rightfully taken his spot as the next president there was concern that the debt may actually be paid off. That would have caused some interesting fiscal problems of a different kind.
But the Supreme Court stepped in and appointed Bush the Lesser as president. One of his first acts was a huge tax cut for the wealthy. This was the first of many acts that Bush would do to blow a huge hole in the debt. Add in wars that were put on our credit card – along with yet another tax cut for the wealthy and we could watch those debt numbers zoom.
Obama came in and started to pay the debt down, but many pieces of toxic legislation prevented him doing so.
And then Trump! Massive tax cuts for the wealthy on 2017, which had a zero net return for the country. A massive recession brought on by his pathetic, probably criminal, response to the pandemic that shuttered businesses and still is keeping millions out of stores.
Raising the debt ceiling is not a blessing to allow the current and future administrations to add on more spending or cut more taxes. Raising the debt ceiling is necessary in order to have money to pay the debts that previous congresses ran up. Most of those debts were run up by Republican congresses by starting unfunded wars and by cutting huge amounts of taxes.
It is scary to me that we have 5 such totally uninformed boobs voting on matters which could ruin both the country and most families financially. It is sickening to think that Chuck Grassley, the self-styled financial genius hasn’t learned what the debt ceiling is or the effects of defaulting in 40 years in the senate.
Well, whoops – seems Grassley had no trouble raising the debt ceiling under Bush the Lesser and Trump. Guess his idea is to cause the country to have a massive depression and then put the blame not on himself who helped cause it but on the President who could do nothing about it.
Guess Chuck and Miller-Meeks, Joni Ernst, Randy Feenstra and Ashley Hinson are all more than willing to let your family burn to the ground just for political points. While I would like to say remember this when you vote next year it looks like we will probably have several rounds of this same game. Each one will be equally dangerous. If the Republicans win, we all pay big time. They won’t.
Remember just a few months ago when people were getting vaccinated and the Biden Administration was sending out stimulus checks in anticipation of us beating the pandemic and re-opening safely. Republicans marshaled their troops whose lives they cared not one whit about to avoid vaccination and set themselves up as sacrificial lambs to stop the economy. This is similar.
Republicans will be happy to sacrifice YOUR family so they can garner votes and make the administration look bad. They care not one whit about you or your life.
And do not forget, this will be one of their weapons when they try to end Medicare and Social Security.
Here is a list of Iowa Women’s March events this weekend. For more information or to RSVP go to Women’s March To find out if there is an event near you go to Women’s March and enter your zip code.
Ames
Campus Town Lincoln Way
Saturday, October 2 2:00 p.m.
On October 2nd we will be standing on the sidewalks of Lincoln Way to defend OUR reproductive rights. Join us! Have fun, bring a poster, and bring a mask as well!
Ankeny
Women Reclaiming Autonomy
Ankeny City Hall, 410 w 1st st
Saturday, October 2 2:00 p.m.
At 3:40 we will meet at Wagner Park (next to city hall).
Cedar Rapids
Rally for Abortion Justice
Greene Square Park, 5th St. SE
Saturday, October 2 2:00 p.m.
Des Moines
It’s our bodies
Iowa State Capital, 1007 Grand Ave
Saturday, October 2 1:00 p.m.
Fairfield
Fairfield Women’s March – Rally for Reproductive Rights
Central Park, West Burlington at North Main Street in Fairfield’s town square.
2 East Broadway Avenue
Saturday, Oct 2 2:00pm
Iowa City
Pedestrian Mall, fountain, 210 S. Dubuque street
Saturday, October 2 2:00 p.m.
Manning
West Central Iowa W2W Circle
Event is virtual
Sunday, June 26 11:30 a.m. A Circle of rural Iowans with our eye on the future who want our voices heard.
For more information or to RSVP go to Women’s March
Sioux City
Rally for Reproductive Justice
Pearl Street Park. 704 Pearl St
Saturday, Oct 2 10:00am
Waterloo
Women’s March for Reproductive Freedom
Office of U.S Senator Chuck Grassley, 531 Commercial St
Saturday, October 2 11:00 a.m.
Sponsored locally by Americans for Democratic Action Iowa and Black Hawk County National Organization of Women.
Here is our facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/666973564695037/?ref=newsfeed
Just my impression after watching this video, but does Senator Wahls know something we don’t know?
“There is no legitimate reason for legislative Republicans to reject this first map. If Republicans vote down the first map that is a clear signal that they are planning to gerrymander Iowa legislative districts to keep themselves in power. It will be an attack on democracy and Democrats will fight it every step of the way.”
Randy Evans’ article published yesterday in The Des Moines Register and elsewhere had a fun but misleading title. Neither Party is Immune to Ineptitude oddly equates Democrats’ poor messaging (no one disagrees, super-frustrating!) with Republican corruption and lying. Sadly, most people who see the headline will never read the content of a pretty good article with one major flaw. Evans’ piece while true, was an example of the “both sides” narrative – the idea that Republicans and Democrats are equally bad.
The “both sides” narrative serves Republicans well. It allows people to take refuge in the idea that Democrats are no different from Republicans. I see this all the time with friends who post on Facebook, lamenting how bad “congress” is or “government” or “politicians.” They are always Republican or no-party voters. “Both sides” serves the side whose fault it is. It’s a constant source of frustration when newspapers say at the top of the article that congress or state lawmakers did something but bury any mention of which party was responsible if they mention it at all.
The “both sides” narrative is of course false and harmful when presented in the media. It is a form of denial of the problem. Some would say it is subtle right wing propaganda because it helps Republicans who are the problem and harms Democrats who are the only thing standing between us and the end of American democracy.
Evans slammed Democrats for weak messaging on the Grassley re-election announcement. Fair enough. Why wouldn’t Democrats have a hard time figuring out what to do and say when the other side is lying and cheating and they can’t count on the press anymore to get the truth out there to a large enough numbers of voters. They can’t count on the press asking Republicans follow-up questions or accurately portraying the Democratic point of view on their behalf like they do for Republicans.
I absolutely will concede Democrats are poorly equipped to deal with the GOP lies-and-corruption machine.But consider that Democrats are just regular people. They weren’t installed by the Koch Brothers or the Heritage Foundation. Democrats don’t have professional propagandists. They don’t have the advantage of getting their talking points handed down to them like Republicans do, from Fox News and sophisticated pollsters that gauge reactions to buzzwords, probably originating from Putin. They don’t have anything like ALEC. The Democrats have the old fashioned idea that if they deliver policies that benefit regular people and tell the truth that should be enough to win an election and govern.
Yes, there is no question the Democrats suck at modern messaging in this era of fake news because Democrats unlike Republicans are not trying to manipulate the public into believing lies. Democrats undoubtedly need an updated strategy to deal with the current situation the Republicans have created. But they are not the problem.
Ineffective Democratic messaging was not the only trivial issue being equated to Republican treason. On the Capital Dispatch photo it says, “Leaders of both major political parties seem unable to demonstrate leadership.” Really? President Biden hasn’t shown leadership over and over during his first 8 months in office? That is a blatantly false statement.
President Biden ended the war in Afghanistan as promised, delivered the Covid vaccines on time as promised, put forth the American Rescue Plan with provisions to greatly help regular Americans, came up with an infrastructure and climate plan as promised, to name just a few of the ways President Biden has shown tremendous leadership. With all the things Biden has done Evans picked one appointment not yet made to suggest Biden has shown no leadership.
My beef with the article is this: If Democrats are inept about messaging which no one would argue, still that is not even in the same category as what the Republicans have done and are continuing to do. Republicans have clearly shown that they have given up on Democracy simply because it doesn’t advantage them.
Evans mentioned Grassley who has obstructed, voted against constituents’ interests, and spread false information (e.g., remember “pulling the plug on grandma” and “death panels”). He rightly mentions Marianette Miller-Meeks who deliberately spread fake news about Biden from a satirical website that clearly displayed none of its content was true. Yet Democrats’ weak messaging and one example of Biden not making an appointment are presented as equally wrong, equally problematic, equally inept and examples of poor leadership?? Come on.
Providing false equivalencies that benefit Republicans who attempted to overturn the results of the 2020 election that Joe Biden won is not objective journalism. Providing false equivalencies for the party that spreads Q-Anon conspiracies and leaves our schools defenseless against Covid is not objective journalism.
The Iowa press needs to give up the “both sides” narrative and face reality no matter how much they would like to appear bipartisan.
Reality and objective journalism should be the same. “Both sides are equally bad” is fake news. It is a harmful practice that needs to stop.
In a recent poll we commissioned, 68% of rural voters believe that when politicians say they want to help rural areas they’re just pandering with a nice message.
I get it. Politicians talk the talk, but many times they don’t deliver. Democrats can change this stigma by passing the budget reconciliation bill that will be a boon for rural communities.
The budget reconciliation plan will make a huge difference in people’s lives before the 2022 election rolls around, especially when you consider that the largest segment of the civilian workforce in rural counties is employed in education services, health care and social assistance industries.
And guess what? The poll we commissioned found that a majority of Rural voters support many of the provisions included in the budget plan:
59% support Universal Pre-k
64% support tax subsidies to help with child care
56% support paid family leave
From investments in child care to expanding Medicare coverage, voters will see firsthand how this bill positively impacts their lives. If Democrats want to make inroads with rural voters, they should absolutely pass the budget reconciliation bill.
It’s the bottom of the 9th inning and Democrats are at bat. They just got a fastball down the middle. They better hit a home run for American families.
Governor Kim Keynolds: (515) 281-5211 U.S. Capitol Switchboard: (202) 224-3121 Iowa Members of Congress - Rep. Randy Feenstra (R) - Rep. Ashley Hinson (R) - Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R) - Rep. Zach Nunn (R) Iowa US Senators - Senator Joni Ernst (R) - Senator Charles Grassley (R)
Conversations on Community Journalism – Part 1
Blog For Iowa 