newspaper writing – Journey Home

This chart says a lot about the history of newspapers in the 21st Century. As the number of employees in the business declined by 75 percent, private equity extracted financial resources from these businesses through mergers and acquisitions, leaving a much diminished infrastructure to provide news and information. There are fewer daily newspapers in 2024 compared to 2000.

As newsroom employees are purged, and substacks, blogs, podcasts, and the like proliferate, we are left with fragmented news sourcing around specific reporters’ individual interests. There is a role for that, but obtaining reliable news about things that matter is increasing difficult, both from the news consumer’s perspective and from the newspaper perspective of doing more and more with fewer resources.

I am interested in the issue of blogs as news sources. Like it or not, Bleeding Heartland, Blog for Iowa, and Iowa Starting Line are no news substitute for the vacuum being created by private equity shedding newspaper employees and mining news assets. Iowa Starting Line is part of Courier Newsroom, funded by reader contributions, sponsors, and philanthropic and corporate underwriting, according to their website. Both Blog for Iowa and Bleeding Heartland have been privately funded, although that model is changing at Bleeding Heartland. Funding is addressed on the Bleeding Heartland website: “Readers can support independent journalism and help cover reporting costs, such as public records requests, by contributing here.” This type of funding provides freedom to do what editors think is best. While a lot of solid journalism is accomplished on blogs like these, they are not a replacement for news.

Some journalists found a way to make a living outside the world of newspapers. It is increasingly clear that with the rise of potentially profitable podcasts, substacks, YouTube channels, and the like, there is more money to be made in these new entities than in writing for a newspaper. There are important essays to read in this fragmented news media, yet our formal news environment is the worse for these one-off entrepreneurial enterprises.

While individual reporters venture into single-source, news-like publications, other things are filling the vacuum left by the demise of newspapers.

Political operatives are filling the news void with coordinated, partisan messaging. When Republicans like Kim Reynolds, Joni Ernst, Ashley Hinson, and Mariannette Miller-Meeks all refer to the New York trial of former president Trump as a “sham,” it is not by accident. They have the resources to develop consistent messaging to an increasingly poorly educated populace where they sow the seeds of their right-wingery. Furthering such messaging is important to Republicans maintaining a majority of elected offices in Iowa. The decline of newspapers created this opportunity for them.

At the same time, the rise in misinformation and disinformation in social media is rampant. First, social media is not a public forum as long as a user name and password is required to gain access. Second, a person can say almost anything, subject to after the fact censoring. Most importantly, troll farms can flood the social media space with posts aligned toward a specific perspective. Whether we like it or not, there is a propaganda war going on in social media, and I don’t mean cats are taking over the world. The degree to which Chinese and Russian troll farms work to infiltrate American social media is a substantial political issue.

For all the hobbles attached to news organizations in the current environment, subscribing to a major newspaper provides more value than harm. It is not enough. We must seek out news writers offering distinct, less biased messaging, and follow them where they are. I’m thinking of Heather Cox Richardson, but there are many others. By all means subscribe to a newspaper. Also take the next step to find writers whose work is valuable and follow them where they publish. This means some work we didn’t previously have to perform, yet the rewards will help us cope with a changing news media infrastructure.

Editor’s Note: This is one of 100 newspaper articles written for the North Liberty Leader, The Solon Economist, and the Iowa City Press Citizen beginning in 2014. The North Liberty Leader stopped publication in early 2022. The Solon Economist remains on the bubble. This is an example of the collaborative type of writing produced with my newspaper editors. The whole experience of freelancing was beneficial if low-paid.

Iowa City Community School District board meeting on Jan 28, 2014. Photo by the author.

Van Allen school to be expanded
Four new classrooms will serve 100 additional students

By Paul Deaton

IOWA CITY (Feb. 5, 2014) – Paintings by Van Allen and Penn Elementary School students on the walls of the Iowa City Community School District (ICCSD) school board meeting were a colorful backdrop as Superintendent Stephen Murley and the board held brief discussions during an equally brief meeting on Jan. 28.

The board held the second of three readings of Appendix 9 , the ICCSD capital projects planning and approval process document that guides the board in its oversight and implementation of the district’s facilities master plan. The long-range plan was adopted on July 23, 2013, and proposes to spend an estimated $252 million on capital improvement projects during a 10 year period. Included in the plan is an addition to Van Allen Elementary School in North Liberty.

Following the formal meeting, the board’s Operations Committee met, and began with an update on the Van Allen design project by representatives of the architectural firm Neumann Monson and Van Allen Principal Pat Brown.

On Dec. 17, 2013, the Iowa City school board approved a project design expenditure of $123,250 for Van Allen. The design was to include additions to the current structure, containing four classrooms to house approximately 100 additional students. A committee of staff volunteers worked with Neumann Monson during the design development phase of the project. Three schematic designs were evaluated, with a final preference for additions to existing pods two (on the East side of the building housing Kindergarten through second grade) and three (on the West side of the building housing grades three through six. The design would create about 5,600 square feet of new space and fall within the approved budget of $1.68 million.

Principal Brown explained the criteria the committee developed for the addition.

“One of the things we’d like to do is to continue, as much as possible, is (keeping) like grades together so that we can group our first grades together, second grades together. Our teams do a lot of collaboration in their planning and delivery of instruction. It works much better when we keep those grades together,” she said.

Brown said another important criterion was flexibility of classroom design.
“We are anticipating growth in the North Liberty area. And as we’ve seen with enrollment, kids don’t always come to us in neat packages with the numbers just right as they move up through the grades. (The additions) could give us growth on both sides of the building.”

“We will have additional classroom space to meet student instructional needs in a positive learning environment,” said Brown in an email after the meeting.

Current enrollment at Van Allen for K-6 is 489 students. In addition, the elementary school also serves 27 preschool students. Projected enrollment for the year 2022-2023 is 527 based on the school’s current attendance area.

According to Brown, there are plans to rezone the attendance areas in North Liberty and Coralville beginning this spring. Additional students will likely be zoned into the Van Allen Elementary attendance area to help with projected elementary population growth.

“North Liberty enrollment projections for the school-aged population taken from the U.S. Census (2000-2010) shows an increase of 122 percent. Coralville increased 29 percent,” said Brown.

Van Allen Elementary School was Iowa’s first LEED certified public school. LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) is a set of rating systems for the design, construction, operation and maintenance of greens buildings intended to help building owners be environmentally responsible and use resources efficiently. Van Allen received a silver LEED certification, and features natural lighting, recycled building materials, geothermal heating and cooling, and natural landscaping. Neumann Monson expects to preserve LEED certification with completion of the project.

The board will hold a public hearing on the final project design in April. Once the design is approved, Neumann Monson expects the bidding documents to be prepared for distribution to contractors by April 24, and returned by May 16. Construction is to begin June 1, with a construction completion date not later than June 30, 2015.

~ Written for the North Liberty Leader.