Two of the five new cameras that are in place inside the House Chambers at the Capitol in Des Moines. (Steve Pope/Freelance)

DES MOINES — Gov. Terry Branstad’s “Condition of the State” address drew the most eyeballs to the live video feed from the Iowa House of Representatives this year.

This was the first year that either legislative chamber went online with live, streaming video. The move, which cost the state $130,000 to install six video cameras, brought the House in sync with what’s becoming standard in statehouses across the nation.

Branstad’s numbers — the Jan. 10 speech attracted a total of 163 unique viewers at a single point in time — may have had a boost given that his speech came in the first week cameras went live.

But it marked one of only two times the single-point viewership passed the triple-digit mark. The other high point came on Feb. 14 when 123 unique visitors logged on to watch House members debate property taxes.

When told of the numbers, Branstad said he was pleased with what the data showed. “That speech focused on our action plan for jobs and education reform,” he said. “I think those are the most important issues facing the state, and I am pleased we had that kind of viewership.”

House of Representatives Chief Clerk Charlie Smithson oversaw the installation of the cameras last fall. “I’m encouraged that some Iowans are tuning in,” he said, although the numbers aren’t quite where he had hoped they would be.

“I think what we’d like to do is market it more,” he said.

So far, only the House chamber has cameras. In October, Senate leadership sent a note to Secretary Mike Marshall directing him to determine what it would take to outfit the Senate chamber with cameras in time for the 85th General Assembly, which convenes in 2013. Committee rooms, unlike some other states, aren’t wired for video.

“I believe the webcasts evolved out of the C-SPAN tradition of televising Congress and similar public affairs networks in states,” Pam Greenberg, a researcher with the National Council of State Legislatures wrote in an email response to questions about how common cameras are in various state assemblies. “Many states have been webcasting legislative sessions for years — two of the earliest were the Missouri House and the Washington Legislature, back in 1996.”

According to the council’s research, most states and U.S. territories have video in at least one chamber of their Legislature. Delaware, Kansas, Maryland, Missouri, both Carolinas, Vermont, West Virginia and Wyoming have only audio. Rhode Island has neither audio nor video.

The Iowa House video isn’t archived, so watching it live is the only way to see floor debate other than being in the gallery in Des Moines. Smithson said archiving is next.

That means lawmakers, clerks, pages and anyone else who might appear on camera during floor debate doesn’t — for the most part — have to worry about a silly look or a stumbled word being replayed in perpetuity. On the other hand, rousing speeches or other such shining moments likewise go officially unrecorded.

But there is an awareness that the cameras are on, even though they’re only streaming and not recording. On Wednesday, Rep. Janet Petersen, D-Des Moines, gave her farewell speech to the House. Her longtime clerk, Claire Haws, made sure she was out of the shot. “I’m a weeper,” Haws explained.

Haws was caught on a private camera wiping tears from her eyes during last year’s debate on same-sex marriage. The video was uploaded to Facebook pages and shared in emails. “I didn’t want my reaction to take away from what she was saying (during the farewell speech),” Haws said. “It’s something you are definitely aware of.”

One of the more tech-comfortable members of the House, Democrat Tyler Olson of Cedar Falls, said lawmakers are aware of the cameras, too. Olson is on Twitter and Facebook and uploads a weekly video to his YouTube site. He said members who tended to talk before cameras were installed talk now; those who didn’t still don’t.

“I haven’t seen a big difference this year,” he said.

House Speaker Kraig Paulsen, R-Hiawatha, who asked for the cameras this year, said they’ll eventually be in committee rooms after some details are worked out. “I don’t think it’s a matter of ‘if’ as much as it is a matter of ‘when,’” he said.

Answers ran the gamut. Trust that news still sells papers. Care about the journalism above all else. Focus more on digital delivery of news. Build better relationships with readers; for example, get out of the office and talk with them. Stop looking for a magic bullet. Stop looking for someone else to solve your problem. Never go to another focus group session. Have the right conversations about the future of newspapers.

This kind of self-reflection happens frequently among journalists trying to determine the best way to provide you with news and information that empowers you as a citizen in this great democracy. The advice from these former editors, from newspapers that included the Los Angeles Times, Philadelphia Inquirer and Concord (N.H.) Monitor, to name a few, reveals mistakes that have been made, as well as an assortment of pet peeves, but also a desire to learn from those mistakes and do the best job possible upholding the trust you put in journalism.

I note the Nieman Foundation article in my Sunday, April 22, column in The Gazette. That Sunday column is my last for The Gazette.

This is my last blog entry for the paper’s web site.

I am off to a new post as executive director of the Iowa Center for Public Affairs Journalism, a two-year-old, Iowa City-based non-profit news organization founded by University of Iowa journalism associate professor Stephen Berry and UI doctoral student Robert “Ted” Gutsche Jr.

Led to this point by Berry, the center is devoted to investigative and public affairs reporting that can be distributed through news organizations throughout Iowa — and beyond if the story works there — but also at its free website www.IowaWatch.org. The effort is funded with grants, contracts and gifts. This is the next logic step for me at this point in my career and a natural progression from what I have been doing at The Gazette.

It is our hope at IowaWatch.org that we can fill a gap in public affairs reporting that has been created by staff cuts in recent years among the reporting ranks at news organizations during a time of financial disruption in the industry. The Gazette, meanwhile, remains dedicated to connecting with communities, engaging with those communities and helping to inform us all of the important matters that affect us.

I will develop a new blog when I get settled in at the new place. I’ll send a note on Twitter and Facebook when it is running.

Thanks, all, for reading. We’ll gather again at a new place.

Link: March 20 e-mail to Gazette staff when decision to step down as Editor was made.

I am writing about the program in my Sunday, April 15, column in the newspaper and also am to speak that day during the announcement time at Bethel A.M.E. Church, 512 Sixth St. SE, in a bid to reach youngsters or at least their families who will gather there. I was invited to speak and appreciate that.

I take a turn showing youths at the Neighborhood Beat Program a few tricks of the trade in August 2011. (Ramona Baldyga, Quota International)

The Gazette and Quota International have been partners in this program the past two years. The Cedar Rapids Police Department also has helped, especially in the first year when we met with kids at the department’s Community Connections Center, 1501 First Avenue SE. We moved out of that facility last year to The Gazette building so that we could be in a newspaper setting.

The program was created to reach eighth-graders interested in writing and journalism but who may not get breaks other kids get when chasing a dream. Those breaks can range from backgrounds when growing up to lucky access to professionals who can help the youths develop some skills.

For eight Wednesday afternoons, June 13-Aug. 8 with a week off for July 4 this year, Gazette reporters and editors will work with students on interviewing, storytelling and writing skills. The youngsters develop stories and present them. I have found these sessions to be enjoyable.

We’ve shown these stories in print and online. Last year we posted everything the kids wrote at this site.

I also have blogged about this program before, in 2010.

The Neighborhood Beat Program has four goals:

• Give youths a better understanding of professional journalism.
• Expand students’ thinking and research skills.
• Expand students’ reading and writing skills.
• Help build students’ confidence.

Gazette public safety reporter Jeff Raasch checks the writing being done by Lauren Wibe (left), entering her freshman year at Cedar Rapids Washington High School in fall 2011, and Elektra Noble, entering her freshman year at Cedar Rapids Kennedy that same fall, at the Neighborhood Beat Program on Aug. 3, 2011. The Gazette and Quota International of Cedar Rapids Inc. presented the summer writing program at The Gazette. (Ramona Baldyga, Quota International)

The best way to get your kid involved? The first thing to know is that this only is for students at Cedar Rapids middle schools. We can do only so much. Applications are at the schools.

We have asked teachers at those schools to identify students who may be interested in the program and Ramona Baldyga, a local Quota International catalyst behind this project, is arranging meetings with teachers and kids. The Gazette’s Patrick Hogan, who covers education, is planning on meeting with kids, too.

Why do this? Because journalism is a noble profession with skills you can use regardless of what you eventually do in life because of the critical thinking, research, personal contact, storytelling and writing skills you use.

Rushing is a 22-year reporting veteran whose experience before reporting in Washington as a freelancer and at The Hill newspaper was as the Florida state capital bureau chief for the Florida Times-Union and in reporting gigs in Fort Worth, Texas; Baton Rouge, La.; Kenosha, Wis..; and Lafayette, Ind.

His first piece was about how people in this country, including those in Eastern Iowa, feel about the $1 coin.

    Another Rushing offering

Rushing resumes coverage The Gazette had provided for many years out of Washington but which was on hold since last fall after the previous freelance provider we used ceased operating. We’re glad to have him on board.

Plus, anything seems to go online, these readers say, referring to broad strokes and accusations that aren’t always true but are hard to refute because of the shout-back when trying to make a statement.

That’s a shame. Our goal at The Gazette is to foster communication about issues and topics that impact our lives in Eastern Iowa. Yet, we are struggling. The reason: evidence backs what readers tell us about the comments.

Admitting this and throwing up our hands is not an option for The Gazette.

TheGazette.com and KCRG.com will host two live chats to discuss with those of you who are interested the tenor and future of commenting on each of our websites. Join us at either website Monday, April 2, from 8 to 9 p.m. or Wednesday, April 4, from noon to 1 p.m.

Aaron Hepker, an online editor with KCRG.com, is leading this effort and will moderate. KCRG-TV9 news director Kara Kelly and I will be there, as well, to interact with the participants.

Our media company hardly is alone when it comes to news organizations trying to foster community conversation. The Poynter Institute, a national educational resource for journalists, published an article last week called, “Why we’ll never stop struggling over comment sections.”

“Comment sections might not attract experts, but they’re visited by a select group nonetheless,” states the article, which has links to more on the topic. In other words, an audience exists. But which audience? And how much larger, engaged and informed could an audience be if it were not so turned off by the select group?

Some newspapers have stopped taking comments on stories. Timesfreepress.com, the website of the Chattanooga Times Free Press stopped taking comments at the beginning of this year on fact-based news, feature, business and sports stories. It allows comments on columns, editorials and cartoons. “Too often, commenters post statements that simply are not accurate; sometimes they attack the person who is the subject of a story,” Times Free Press Managing Editor Alison Gerber wrote in a Jan. 1 column.

TheGazette.com allows commenting on stories except for those involving crimes — people speculate without information and due process is a right — and stories that draw insensitive comments based on culture, race and individual lifestyles.

The Poynter story refers to the Greeley Tribune, which stopped taking comments last year. A group called Digital News Test Kitchen is analyzing old comments at the Tribune’s website as part of a project called “Civilizing User Comments.”

Shortly after the Tribune made its move the Los Angeles Times carried a piece online called “Online comments: ‘Our goal of civility is falling short’.” And the list goes on.

As I was writing this for my Sunday, April 1, column in the printed Gazette and for this blog I heard a voice in my head saying: stop whining and do something about it. The voice could have been from any of you but, rather, it was my own. Having dialogue with the public is a good step toward doing something about it but not the last step. We intend to use the feedback to find the best solution for engaging audiences and fostering communication, in which we still believe at The Gazette.

Our system is broke and we want to fix it. Be part of the solution, if you feel inclined, and join one of the live chats. It will be moderated per the rules of engagement.

Why is this not on front page? It is the most important news item. Do your job! Should be on Pg 1 daily.

I answered the question in my Sunday, March 25, column in The Gazette. Federal spending certainly has many people concerned. The numbers are so huge that people are paying attention, which isn’t always the case when we run stories about government budgets.

The Gazette will continue to seek stories from our news services that explain federal spending. We’ll aim the most insightful ones to page 1 but others will be published on our Nation/World page, some in briefs, others in longer stories. Consider each story a piece of the larger collection of knowledge you are receiving from multiple stories and news media.

On another matter:

I received this email after a photo on our March 9 back page showed just the legs of Michelle Obama and Safak Pavey, a member of Turkey’s Parliament who lost her left arm and left leg in a train accident. Their faces were not in the photo and, of course, you plainly could see Pavey’s prosthetic arm and leg.

First lady Michelle Obama (left) stands with Safak Pavey of Turkey before she was presented with the 2012 International Women of Courage Award, on the 101st Anniversary of International Women's Day, Thursday, March 8, 2012, at the State Department in Washington. Pavey, the first disabled woman elected to the Turkish Parliament, is being recognized for her work championing the rights of vulnerable populations. (Charles Dharapak/AP)

Are you trying to “showcase” Ms Pavey’s “disabled” legs in contrast to Mrs. Obama’s “normal”legs? That picture is in VERY POOR TASTE; and if I was either of these women, I would be extremely offended!

I hope to see an apology and a “correct” picture, including their faces, in “The Gazette” sooner rather than later.

The photo we published was taken by the Associated Press and ran as submitted. It was taken with a purpose: to illustrate the personal side of Pavey receiving the 2012 International Women of Courage Award for her tireless work on behalf of disabled and vulnerable people, and to make you think about it instead of ignoring the photo.

I understand the reader’s discomfort with the photo but it was provocative and, hopefully, made people curious enough to at least consider that disabilities should not have to matter when recognizing accomplishments.

Finally, I received a little more than a dozen emails about the “Doonesbury” cartoons about Texas’ abortion law and the way The Gazette handled the comic strip. Most of those sending emails wanted the strip printed in the comics section, although all but a few were assuaged when it ran on the Saturday, March 17, Opinion page.

My favorite was this one:

Where was Doonesbury in the Saturday (Sunday colour strip) March 10th colour section? (oh and thanks for putting the comics back in their own section. I hated them deep in the body of another section)

I responded that the strip was in its usual spot on the comics page on page 4C with the Accent section features. The reader wrote back that comics are in section “W” section. The reader added:

I don’t know what ‘Accent’ is.

Where are you looking for this? I asked in a return email.

Lyle, don’t know how to tell you this but I just looked at your sig. You are in Iowa, I’m in Montreal and the paper I’m referring to is The MONTREAL Gazette.

There is a bunch ‘o’ red faced guffawing goin’ on here.

Strange how most of this conversation made sense.

The Gazette has participated with IowaWatch.org on a few projects, including a recent State Integrity Investigation in conjunction with the Center for Public Integrity, Global Integrity and Public Radio International.

The Gazette remains a strong, 129-year-old independent, family-owned news outlet, in print and online and with a commitment to engaging communities in meaningful conversation that can empower people to be good decision makers. I’ve put 25 years into this place so leaving is bittersweet. But I look forward to the new gig and will be eager to get started after taking care of some duties at The Gazette.

Below is the note I sent to staffers who could not attend meetings where I announced my intentions.

* * *

Dear colleagues,

Many of you heard this when I spoke at various staff meetings today but some of you were unable to attend so I want to send this note to let you know that I am leaving SourceMedia Group and The Gazette to become executive director of the Iowa Center for Public Affairs Journalism. The Iowa City-based non-profit center, founded by University of Iowa journalism associate professor Stephen Berry and which operates the website www.IowaWatch.org, is devoted to investigative and public affairs reporting that can be distributed through news organizations throughout the state. This is a passion of mine and an opportunity at this point in my life on which I could not pass.

My last day at The Gazette will be Friday, April 20.

I expect to be working with you in my new role as I look for partnerships that result in good journalism. The Center for Public Integrity report on government integrity this week was the result of such a partnership, in which IowaWatch.org and Gazette staffers collaborated for an impactful story.

The decision to leave this place is difficult. I filed my first bylined story at The Gazette the afternoon of my first day on the job, March 9, 1987. Since then, I have had amazing experiences: covering stories that are now part of Iowa history; working with talented reporters, photographers, artists and editors; being part of our early efforts at newsroom convergence (and the accompanying thrill rides with Mike Wagner during a night of immigration raids); being the editor of a 129-year-old family-owned newspaper; working with supportive bosses and devoted staffers; building lasting friendships and collecting lot of great memories.

* * *

The Monday, March 19, copy of The Gazette will report a new national study of the safeguards states have in place to fight corruption in state government. Called the State Integrity Investigation, the study looks at the rules and practices state governments have in place for ensuring that the risk for corruption in those governments is minimized.

The study, led by the Center for Public Integrity, examines:

–  State laws that govern our access to public information, political financing, executive accountability, legislative accountability, judicial accountability, the budget process, civil service management, procurement, internal auditing, lobbying disclosure, state pension fund management, ethics enforcement agencies, state insurance commissions, and redistricting.

–  How effective these laws and institutions are when it comes to actual practices.

–  How accessible the laws and institutions are to citizens.

Of particular interest will be something the Center for Public Integrity calls the enforcement gap. That is the difference between the system and laws a state establishes and how well they are enforced.

The report will follow one released Wednesday that graded states on an A-to-F scale on how transparent their spending information is online. Iowa got a big, fat “F” in that U.S. Public Interest Research Group report so it figures that people who watch government will be interested in Monday’s report. The new report also will have some letter grades.

The Gazette and the Iowa City-based, non-profit Iowa Center for Public Affairs Journalism collaborated on the Iowa portion of the Center for Public Integrity study. Reporters from both Iowa news organizations spent a great deal of time during the last half of 2011 getting answers to specific questions crafted by the Center for Public Integrity and using a guide to give numerical scores to those answers.

We were glad to take part in this study. One hope out of it is that any gaps in the system already in place and how that system is used can be closed with greater awareness.

Questions were designed to answer larger ones, such as, “Do citizens have a legal right to access of information,” “Are lobbyists required to disclose spending?” and “Is the state redistricting process open and transparent?” Numerical scores were based on the notion that a “yes” answer was worth 100 points, a “no” was worth 0 and qualifying information could generate scores of 25, 50 or 75, depending upon the question.

The national center did follow-up research using comments, references, interviews and peer review of the initial answers to arrive at final grades. It was exhaustive work requiring more hours than originally expected but we feel we have a good measure of all of these categories to tell you about on March 19.

In all, 16,500 indicators were compiled nationwide, covering 61 areas of focus in the 14 main categories listed at the beginning of this column in order to create something called corruption risk indicators. The goal of having indicators, the Center for Public Integrity states, is “to diagnose the strengths and weaknesses of the medicine applied against corruption in each state – openness, transparency, and accountability – rather than the disease of corruption itself.”

A link to the complete investigation methodology can be found here.

The Center for Public Integrity is a nonpartisan, nonprofit investigative news organization in Washington, D.C. whose mission is “to reveal abuses of power, corruption and dereliction of duty by powerful public and private institutions in order to cause them to operate with honesty, integrity, accountability and to put the public interest first.” It was founded by Charles Lewis, 58, executive editor of the Investigative Reporting Workshop at the American University School of Communication and a former news producer for ABC News and CBS News’ “60 Minutes.”

UPDATE: A guest column was not procured for this particular opinion page. A column by Hemmingsen critical of the Texas law runs with the strips.

The Gazette ran the first installment of the series on Monday, March 12, but not the rest. The explanation for that was described in my previous blog post.

Good community conversation should focus on the right conversation. For some, that conversation is whether these particular “Doonesbury” strips should be published on the comics page, opinion page or at all. For many, it is whether or not abortion is anathema to the sanctity of life.

For others, however, the larger conversation is about whether or not women should be forced into a medical procedure that a doctor would not perform unless government ordered it.

The opinion page is a good spot for this conversation.

Some interesting stories have been written during the week about this week’s “Doonesbury” comics. Here are a few links:

Lists of newspapers who pulled Doonesbury this week
Garry Trudeau: ‘Doonesbury’ Abortion Furor ‘Good for Business’; Wall Street Journal
If ‘Doonesbury’ skipped abortion law controversy, it would be ‘comedy  malpractice,’ says cartoonist Gary Trudeau
What’s all the fuss about?  Doonesbury and the American Family
Doonesbury’ creator Garry Trudeau discusses divisive strips about abortion

Garry Trudeau: ‘Doonesbury’ Abortion Furor ‘Good for Business’; Wall Street Journal

If ‘Doonesbury’ skipped abortion law controversy, it would be ‘comedy  malpractice,’ says cartoonist Gary Trudeau

What’s all the fuss about?  Doonesbury and the American Family

Doonesbury’ creator Garry Trudeau discusses divisive strips about abortion

* * *

I love Garry Trudeau’s work in the comic strip “Doonesbury.” I have loved it for decades, ever since my younger brother — who also turned me on to Monty Python and, after that, the Second City TV show when it was on PBS — introduced me to the strip. But we are going to run in The Gazette newspaper a series of strips on Tuesday through Saturday in which he makes fun of social media users, with an added twist in the ribs to idiots in general, instead of strips Trudeau wrote about Texas’ sonogram-before-abortion law.

I tell readers about this in my column in the Sunday, March 11, Gazette newspaper.

We are opting out of five of the six strips he drew that deal with Texas’ law requiring pregnant women to have sonograms before having an abortion in that state. Our decision on which strips to run is not based on the subject matter, which is fair game and which will be published in the Monday, March 12, “Doonesbury” strip.

Rather, it is based on the sensitivities we suspect many of our readers will have about the settings and situations depicted in the comic strips, and graphic language that is used.

The strips deal with a woman getting an abortion in Texas and intrusive Republicans trying to shame and stop her. One strip has a middle-aged male Republican state legislator who calls the woman a slut. Another strip depicts a doctor in an exam room explaining to the woman in detail the prescribed transvaginal exam she is about to receive.

The comics have created a fuss, but people familiar with Trudeau are accustomed to this. So is he. He provided original strips that pick on social media as alternatives to those dealing with the abortion law.

Other newspapers in the country are doing the same thing we are, I learned after making our decision and then surfing the Internet later Friday to see how others were reacting.

The strips raise an issue on the minds of many who are passionate about abortion. They are based on a U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision in January that upheld a Texas law requiring doctors to perform a sonogram and to ask women planning an abortion to listen first to the fetal heartbeat. The women do not have to listen to the heartbeat but have to listen to the doctor’s description, unless they are rape or incest victims, or if there is a fetal abnormality.

Trudeau comes down hard on Texas Republicans and, in particular Gov. Rick Perry, who swept through Iowa this past year in a failed presidential bid, for enacting the sonogram law and fighting the court challenge against it.

The Gazette has printed plenty of controversial, offensive strips from both “Mallard Fillmore”, which hardly tiptoes beyond the line where people get offended, and “Doonesbury.” Our approach has been to let the artists have a voice, and to have multiple voices from various viewpoints on the comics page. Trudeau’s Monday strip seems within the bounds our readers tell us they expect and it also gets the topic out there so that it can provoke thought about what is happening in Texas. The final two in the series likely would not hit our audience too hard, either, but context will be missing if we run those without the middle set.

But our experiences with readers tell me the way the matter is treated in other strips in this series would exceed the boundaries our readers expect when looking at family comics such as “Wizard of Id,” “Dennis the Menace” and “Pluggers.” This isn’t an indictment of Trudeau. Rather, it is a response to what we traditionally hear from readers.

For those wanting to see the full series of the Texas law series, “Doonesbury” is online. Check for the strips at www.doonesbury.com

“What local companies are doing in our community, and helping our local economy with job growth and competition, like ImOn Communications,” one customer responded. Whether that was a pitch for writing about local businesses, a dig at ImOn competitor and national media giant Mediacom, or both is left for us to surmise.

However, the note gives me a chance to tell you we are finding ways to get more news and information about local businesses onto our business pages. In the past year Gazette business editor Michael Chevy Castranova has introduced a regular feature called “My Biz” to tell you about these businesses. The feature runs in the centerpiece spot of our Money page each Wednesday. Plus, we have the Sunday Business 380 section in the printed Gazette.

All of this business content can be found at our website, Business380.com.

I’ve received other notes and comments from readers recently. I wrote about them in my Sunday, March 4, column in The Gazette newspaper.

Cannot believe how you decide publishing stocks in Sunday paper is less important than more Hawk coverage.

This refers to our decision in August to drop a two-page list of the previous week’s stocks from the Sunday paper while adding two pages for sports. We still run in the newspaper the previous day’s stocks of local interest. We’ve received requests to add some and a few tweaks have been made because of those requests. Again with the Business380.com plug, the daily stocks are on that website’s homepage.

Please cover more of the Cascade Cougars.

This can be paired with:

We were very disappointed this summer by the lack of coverage of Lansing Kee High’s runner-up baseball team…”

We try to cover as much prep sports as possible in our 16-county coverage area. Gazette veteran J.R. Ogden is recruiting people in local towns to help cover sports there. He oversees what these community contributors write and displays it at TheGazette.com and on page 2 of the Sunday Gazette sports section.

Have been subscribers for 61 years after Oct. 15, 1950, and never had any problems. Like a home town paper for us. Started at or in Johnson Co. Thanks.

You are welcome, and thanks for reading.

Many of us miss local news in the Gazette. One example – a train derailment between Central City and Coggon that was news and (a) long time repairing back to normal. Not one word or photo in (The) Gazette. I’m a long-time subscriber – like 74 years and my parents’ home before that.

This refers to a derailment on Nov. 10. No injuries were reported.

We try to focus more on explanatory reporting in The Gazette and less on spot news events but still want to know about your community. Dave Rasdal has been through Coggon a few times in recent months for columns from there.

We just missed the train derailment. But I felt compelled to respond because anyone who reads us for 74 years deserves an answer.

Finally, here’s a bonus for you online readers. I ran out of room in my newspaper column but got this last week after I wrote about our plans for 2012.

Mr. Muller,
I very much appreciate your willingness to communicate with the Gazette’s readers, both through your Sunday columns and replying to emails such as this.  I hope that the thoughts that I send along come across as constructive rather than complaining. 
You mentioned “what you tell us about the expectations you have when you encounter the Gazette”.  Naturally, this provided me with an opening.  Your later mention of KCRG-TV “which is owned by the same company that owns the Gazette” brought to mind a concern that I have had of late.  That is the fact that many times when I read something in the Gazette, I find myself thinking, “That is the same story that I heard on the news last night, almost verbatim.”  In discussing this with a friend this morning, he felt the same way.  I am not referring to the “Here are the stories you will see in tomorrow’s Gazette,” spots, but the news stories themselves.  While the sharing of resources makes good economic sense, perhaps this is too much of a good thing.  An option we discussed is that perhaps we should view a different channel for news, so that the Gazette content will be a bit “newer” to us.  I dismissed this as no option at all because of my feeling that the people at KCRG are head and shoulders above those at the other stations.  Again, just letting you know how I feel.  Hopefully the input is useful.  As always, thanks for listening…

The newsrooms for The Gazette and KCRG-TV9 are combined, so reporters are gathering information for both news outlets and their websites. A few other newsrooms like this exist in the country and I have talked with the leaders of some of those places about how they handle the different expectations for newspaper and television audiences.

When we rely on journalists who appear on KCRG-TV9 for stories we try to give the stories a new twist for a unique newspaper experience. We rewrite stories for fresher angles, a different reading experience and to add context in the paper if it is needed. We think people watch television news to learn about and see what’s happening and that they look to newspapers for more depth, insight and context.

Some time ago we used KCRG-TV9 in the byline of stories written for The Gazette by people you’ve come to know at television reporters. While recognizing the television station as a source that practice did two things, both of them negative: 1) it contradicted the notion of one newsroom of journalists providing information for multiple media outlets and 2) it gave a sure sign that what you were reading was last night’s news.

We have more work to do on this. But we’ve adapted, dating back to more than a year ago. In the meantime, we have given journalists you see on television a chance to write in a different medium about things they have learned through their reporting.

We are conducting an online survey in which we ask about your reading habits, your experience with The Gazette and the kinds of coverage you’d like to see from us. We want to learn from you so that we are more responsive to your needs and interests.

This is old-fashioned research. In the past you have told us you want more investigative reporting, insight into issues that affect you and a newspaper that presents information in an entertaining, fulfilling way.

Our hope is that we can go deeper into your interests with this new survey, but also by visiting with some of you personally in the not-too-distant future.

This is part of plan I wrote about previously to deliver what you want this year and beyond. From this initial survey we will do some followup. First we need to understand your interest in the paper.

Click here to get to the survey.

My reference point is the Pew Internet & American Life Project report issued last month, which showed the number of Americans owning either a tablet computer or an e-book reader almost doubled after Christmas, from 10 percent in December to 19 percent in January.

It looks as though 2012 is going to be a big year for e-readers. We are working furiously at The Gazette to make sure we are on board with the rest of you, providing a useful way to read our news and information on that electronic device to which you are becoming attached.

We’ve had a mobile site, GazetteToGo.com, for some time and added a mobile app as that technology emerged but want to expand on what we’ve done. Development is taking place now. Our hope is that you will see useful changes this spring and throughout the year with our mobile and tablet products, with more features that are friendly with however you read our content electronically.

Meantime, we continually are adapting TheGazette.com and its related websites – Business380.com and HooplaNow.com, for example – to keep them relevant for you. We expect to have a few things to roll out in the next few months but our effort will be ongoing throughout the year.

We also are working on ways to spruce up The Gazette printed newspaper. We are analyzing the changing habits of people who read our paper, but also newspapers in general.

Where this leads depends upon what you tell us about the expectations you have when you encounter The Gazette. But expect changes in the coming year in how we present our news and advertising in print. We are looking at how we design pages, cover topics you say are important, and display features you say make reading the newspaper a pleasurable experience.

These changes are being contemplated because we continually want to make sure we are giving you the finest journalism and commercial information available in the Corridor. This will be change for an intended good, not for change’s sake.

Our plate certainly is full this year. I’ll keep you up to date in this space as changes are made. More certainly is to come.

Comments on news stories now go to a separate page, which will serve as a public forum for commenters but which also will give people who want to experience our stories without the comments an opportunity to do so. We hear from many people who find the comments to be a less than pleasant experience. These readers are more prevalent than some of our commenters would like to believe, and they matter to us as much as those who take the time to weigh in with their thoughts.

People who want to comment on stories, or read the comments, may click the comment link and go to the forum. This approach is done at many news outlets with success.

The move only will be made with news stories. Comments on individual blogs displayed on TheGazette.com will remain on the same page as the blog posts so that writers can continue to communicate with followers. These blogs are: all of our sports and outdoors blogs, Ramblin‘, Homegrown, Jennifer Hemmingsen, Todd Dorman, Jeff Tecklenburg, the visuals blog and this one, Mulling it Over. We do not want to diminish the conversations individual writers are having with readers on blogs.

Comments on “On Your Mind” are displayed on the page that poses the daily question.

Comments on Letters to the Editor are displayed on the page with the letters as a way of continuing dialogue that a letter writer starts.

Even in the separate forum, comments still are being moderated under protocols established last year.

An internal committee of staffers from TheGazette.com and KCRG.com meets on a semi-regular basis to discuss ways to make the commenting experience meaningful for an increasing number of people.

We took a look on Feb. 16 at plans Linn County communities other than Cedar Rapids have if the tax passes there. This is a countywide vote, after all, with the exception being places that approved the tax last year.

On Sunday, Feb. 19, we took you to the Time Check Neighborhood for a sampling of sentiment there about the tax. We also had a story on how the city is considering options for redevelopment in the flood zone.

In the next couple of weeks leading up to the tax vote we plan to:

– Explore whether plans exist for commercial development west of the Cedar River, especially given the attention the east side is getting. That story is planned for next Sunday, Feb. 26.

– Review what the city selected some time ago as its preferred plan for flood protection. We want the story to answer questions such as how much this would cost, what kind of protection it would provide, how the city decided upon the plan and from where funding would come.

– Report on how local-option sales tax money collected to date has been spent.

– Show what kind of risks businesses in areas such as New Bo and Czech Village have taken financially to return to the flood zone expecting flood protection.

Our goal is to give you loads of information in a dispassionate manner so that you can make your decision about whether or not to extend a 1 percent local-option sales tax in Linn County for 10 years, from its current June 30, 2014, expiration to June 30, 2024.

I use the word dispassionate because so much passion exists among people who have deep interests in how this vote turns out. That is to be expected when taxes are involved but also when you are dealing with the tender nerves that still exist from the Flood of 2008 and also last May’s attempt at a 20-year extension that failed by 221 votes.

In next month’s tax vote, Cedar Rapids would be bound to use the tax revenue “to establish and maintain a flood protection system on both the east and west sides of the Cedar River,” the ballot states. How the council would deal with that language is one of the questions tax opponents have because the Cedar Rapids City Council could pass an ordinance to use LOST revenue from an urban renewal area on that urban renewal area. The council only could use direct growth in revenue for the urban renewal area, but that possibility exists.

Any move in that direction would have to be done in open meetings and you could call it a given that it would cause a serious uproar in the city.

So few photos get published that it is a shame to let the others go unseen. The digital world has provided opportunities to resolve that.

One of the more interesting things posted there recently is a link to video and photos taken with cameras that Brian Ray, Mark Carlson and Matt Nelson mounted onto the wings of L-29 jets that University of Iowa researchers are using in conjunction with Rockwell Collins to study how pilots’ brains function during combat.

We posted this package at TheGazette.com on Thursday, Feb. 16. A story and photos were planned for the Sunday, Feb. 19, Gazette newspaper’s Iowa Today section.

Another interesting bit shows photographers Liz Martin and Cliff Jette in high places — the rafters of Wells Fargo Arena in Des Moines, preparing for our coverage of the winter prep sports tournaments there. Lighting a huge arena for good photos is no easy task. Some spectacular photos on the Facebook page give you a behind-the-scenes look at how Liz and Cliff went about their work.

We also have launched a TheGazette.com blog for photos and videos. Visuals editor Rollin Banderob and his team pulled that together with our tech people. A link is in the right-hand column of this blog if you are reading on a laptop. Or, you can click here. Check it out.

Some stats popped out at me, such as a 65 percent drop in annual revenue from the year before the record 2008 flood rendered the building useless and a 77 percent drop in annual audience numbers during that same time.

Part of the solution to absorbing the loss, Diana’s story points out, rests in the fact that the UI can deal with some of it in a larger institutional setting.

The situation differs from that of Theatre Cedar Rapids, Diana told me when I asked her about the Hancher’s lost revenue. Theatre Cedar Rapids, whose downtown Cedar Rapids facility also was flooded in 2008, is its own entity. It didn’t have a larger institutional safety net while presenting shows at other venues and rebuilding for its reopening two years ago.

The impact at Hancher goes beyond revenue numbers, and Diana’s story points that out. Thousands of UI students will go through school without the chance of having the full Hancher experience. A popular destination spot on campus is shut down, with no replacement expected until a little less than four years from now.

In another time the fact that the UI has to replace a ruined Hancher Auditorium would be one of the biggest news stories of recent years, much like the UI Old Capitol dome fire was a little more than 10 years ago.

However, even with an estimated price tag of $161 million Hancher is just one small piece of a multibillion dollar recovery necessary in several Eastern Iowa locations hit by the 2008 floods, as well as in places across the state hit by subsequent disasters. But its recovery still is a big deal and worth your time with today’s paper.

Like a good drama, this post-flood story about Hancher Auditorium is playing out in three acts. The opening act introduced the flood and our initial response to it. That set the stage for the second act currently playing out, when antagonists such as costs, disagreement over details and impatience over the passage of time create conflict.

What has those who care deeply about Hancher pumped up is their expectation for the third act: when conflicts get resolved and protagonists win the day.

Link to Diana’s story

There actually were two photos on a page to which the sticky note was attached: one showing Occupy Wall Street protesters and bearing the caption “Twenty-Year-Olds in 2011 Wanting Everything” and the other showing soldiers and bearing the caption “Twenty-year-olds in 1944 Giving Everything.” Here’s one link that shows the two photos.

I take issue in my Sunday, Feb. 5, Gazette column (pay site) with the broad message about young adults, knowing that the real target is the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Three of every 10 soldiers who lost their lives in the Iraq war were 22 and younger and four of every five were 30 or younger. One in four of those dying in the war in Afghanistan were 22 and younger, while three of four were 30 or younger.

On the peace front, the note crossed my desk after a weekend during which a college student hit my wife and me up for a donation to the 2012 University of Iowa Dance Marathon. My wife and I have donated to this in the past to support him and other students who have raised more than $10 million for pediatric cancer care since 1994.

The Dance Marathon is one of the many service-oriented projects that young people take on in a country that saw the number of young adults doing volunteer work increase from 7.8 million in 2007 to 8.2 million in 2009, the most recent data available from the Corporation for National and Community Service.

Yes, young people exist who want things handed to them. We all have encountered them, sometimes with older folks of the same ilk. And, yes, people gave great sacrifices in days fading too quickly to get us to this point in our country’s history. But the  broad-stroke notion that young people aren’t willing to give of themselves doesn’t hold water.

To answer the original question: We cannot print the pictures because they are protected by copyright.

This particular cartoon showed urinals and a punch line related to urinating — ” Stop me before I urinate again!” written in red as graffiti — didn’t connect with the reader. Here’s a link to the pay site where you can see the comic. Or, if you are a Gazette subscriber, or interested in the monthly subscription, you can check it out on the Jan. 19 comic page at My Green Gazette.

“I can see that some may think ‘Close to Home’, “Working It Out”, and even “Mallard Fillmore” may be funny commix, but remember the kids read them, too,” the reader noted. “This, however,” she wrote above a clipping of the offending comic, “does not belong in the newspaper … let alone in the cartoon page.”

It was a fair enough complaint, although the site of a urinal likely is tame compared to the things to which young people are exposed.

While on the topic of comics in the paper, you may have heard that Universal Uclick, the syndicate that provides the cartoon “Cul de Sac” by Richard Thompson, has sent a note to papers that carry Thompson’s strip about it being in a four-week period of reruns. Those newspapers include The Gazette.

Thompson is in a new treatment for Parkinson’s disease. He describes the treatment on his blog, and is funny doing so.

Original comics will return but with help from artist Stacy Curtis. Thompson still will write the strip and do some art work with Curtis, Universal president Lee Salem says in his note to newspapers but Curtis’ help will be needed in varying degrees over time.

Public information board proposal to get full airing

Despite attention to openness, problems exist

Iowans in poll favor more effort into providing access

Fight over Riverdale security video ends with payout

Last year the North Liberty City Council was working on a policy for dealing with open records that included in an early draft the following:

“By providing the requested information, the City cannot guarantee the accuracy or completeness of any specific information provided in response to an open records request, nor the appropriateness of the context in which it is used.”

The section was removed; a good thing if you think a city should keep and distribute accurate and complete records. A few other portions in the draft were removed, too, after the city took input from the state ombudsman’s office and also from Lori Lindner, editor of the North Liberty Leader, who raised concerns with city officials about the policy’s initial draft.

Keeping all city attorney communications secret was changed to the more practical — and legal — city attorney communications that are protected by state or federal law. Requiring an appointment to exam public records was changed to the more flexible: needing adequate notice.

The goal for the policy that eventually was adopted in late July, North Liberty’s city attorney, Scott Peterson, said, was having something that was sound and practical for keeping the city fully consistent with Iowa’s open records law.

The episode is an example of how city councils and the citizens they serve wrestle sometimes with having transparent government. It also is an example of how a local newspaper was able to serve its traditional watchdog role and help government be more effective.

The Gazette and several other newspapers across the state have produced several stories on how Iowans view openness in their government. Mock surprise — Iowans favor openness. But beyond that obvious conclusion, a survey conducted by the Iowa Freedom of Information Council reveals that Iowans embrace the notion of openness on their own, and don’t think it is just a matter involving journalists.

The news organizations involved in the special report, running in several daily papers on Sunday, Jan. 29, but also available to weekly newspapers that want to run any portion of it, are the Iowa Freedom of Information Council, Iowa Newspaper Association and the following newspapers: The Gazette, Burlington Hawk-Eye, Des Moines Register, Dubuque Telegraph-Herald and Lee Enterprises’ Mason City Globe-Gazette, Muscatine Journal, Quad-City Times, Sioux City Journal and Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier.

The report’s timing coincides with interest open government advocates have in legislation being considered to establish an Iowa Public Information Board, an oversight board that would have the power to resolve disputes citizens and their governments have over access to public information.

The news value in these news stories is that they tell you about your right to know what government is doing and how strongly you feel about that. But a report about being transparent must include the fact that news organizations in Iowa have a motive for sharing this information, as well. That is because many of us in this business, myself included, have lobbied for passing legislation that creates  the oversight board.

Gov. Terry Branstad supports the oversight board and Democratic and Republican leaders in both the House and Senate express no problems with it finally passing this year after kinks get worked out in the House, where the legislation currently exists. Branstad and House Speaker Kraig Paulsen made a point of bringing this up when meeting with The Gazette Editorial Board on separate occasions in January.

Plenty of information from the people who govern you is available and with far better ease than ever thanks to the Internet. Any mention of North Liberty’s example with its open records policy also should note that the city is among several in Iowa that post a massive amount of information on websites. Council briefing packets, agendas, reports, how-to information – all are there at your fingertips. North Liberty’s site goes so far as to have video of its City Council meetings.

One of the stories in the newspapers’ report shows that many people working in government wish the public took more interest in what they do.

But disputes come up in which the public, and also those in government, want answers to questions about Iowa’s open records and open meetings laws. When these disputes emerge, we find in that Iowa Freedom of Information Council survey that you want more effort into holding open meetings and making government documents accessible.

We’ve noticed Leonard’s Pitt’s column missing from the Gazette the last few Sundays. We miss him. Is he on vacation or is he too left wing for the Gazette’s right wing sensibilities? Just curious.

A short while later came this, from the same reader:

OOPS!! I didn’t gaze past right wing Krauthammer. Sorry.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and surmise that the reader likes Pitts more than conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer on The Gazette’s Sunday Opinion Page cover.

I have not met Krauthammer but have met Pitts, a Pulitzer Prize winning-columnist who usually shares that opinion page cover with Krauthammer. Pitts was here a few years ago and I drove him from an Iowa City appearance to one in Cedar Rapids. I wrote about this in my Sunday Gazette column and would like to share it here on the blog.

I like reading Pitts. He writes with clarity about how the way we behave as a nation impacts people, especially those who get marginalized. So I jumped at the chance to get Pitts alone in my car for 30 minutes so that I could pick his brain about writing, in particular, but also his views on the human condition in America.

I’d do the same with Krauthammer if given the chance, knowing that he has a far different take on the human condition in America than Pitt has.

It turned out on this particular day with Pitts that he had endured a tiring trip in which he landed in a plane in Des Moines, got a ride to Iowa City for his morning sessions and then went to Cedar Rapids for the afternoon and evening sessions. He was exhausted when we pulled out of Iowa City.

He was gracious with the time I captured from him but admittedly wasn’t as sharp as he would like to have been. He conceded that he needed the 30-minute drive to Cedar Rapids to just rest so I backed off on the questions.

Pitts is to return to Eastern Iowa later this month. He is scheduled to be the keynote speaker at Coe College’s Contemporary Issues Forum the night of Jan. 31 but you are out of luck if you are a fan who wants to see him. The event is sold out.

He’s a busy — and popular — man.

It may be hard to believe but TheGazette.com has not had a features section. Sure, we’ve had Milestones and our HooplaNow.com sites, but not a rich variety of stories on other topics dealing with your lifestyles, such as your health or nutrition. We have been revamping the web site for a while and see a strong interest in this kind of information.

We have added to the TheGazette.com a large amount of stories, information and photos for health, food, people and places, fashion and home, with emphasis on the Eastern Iowa area we cover. We’ve tossed this information in, along with Milestones and a link to the HooplaNow.com “things to do” web site, for a page called “Life & Accent.”

From TheGazette.com’s main page you can find the features by going to the main navigation bar at the top of the page and clicking “life.” Or, you can go directly to http://TheGazette.com/life.

You will find stories by our Gazette writers, plus easy links to blogs by Gazette columnist Dave Rasdal and gardening, green technology and “Homegrown” writer Cindy Hadish. Some early bugs have existed for getting the link to Cindy’s blog but directions exist to get you there. We already are planning more interesting twists for the page in the near future, but wanted to get this fine writing online first so that it can be shared.

Let us know what you’d like to see on the site.

Reporting the truth.

“Somewhere along the way, truthtelling was surpassed by other priorities the mainstream press felt a stronger duty to,” he wrote on his blog, PressThink, on Thursday, Jan. 12. The catalyst for his post was another blog post, from New York Times public editor Arthur Brisbane, in which Brisbane asks for public input on whether and when Times reporters should challenge every “fact” that newsmakers assert. Brisbane means politicians and refers to yet another blog by Times opinion writer Paul Krugman.

Krugman focused on statements Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney has made to position himself in a potential 2012 presidential campaign against President Barack Obama. Obama has cut the defense budget, Romney says; Obama actually has increased defense spending, Krugman writes. Obama will put free enterprise on trial, Romney says; Obama goes out of his way to praise free enterprise and says it’s OK to be rich, Krugman writes.

The objection these folks have about the state of journalism is that we simply report what is said instead of what actually exists; i.e. the truth.

Krugman picks Romney as his example but your choice of comments can cross political lines. Would Republicans would end Medicare, as Democrats assert? No. A budget plan in the Republican-controlled House last year would change it for workers under the age of 55 but not for people 65 and older, reports Annenberg Public Policy Center’s FactCheck.org. The center tackles myths perpetrated by both major political parties.

Old-timers will recall the famous – infamous, depending on your point of view – “Daisy” commercial from the 1964 presidential campaign. That’s the Democratic Party ad in which a little girl is playing with daisies, and then a nuclear bomb is shown exploding on the screen, conveying that Republican candidate Barry Goldwater would oversee a nuclear war that destroys all the little children of the world.

So, what to make of the questions people like Rosen and Krugman are raising? First, that they are right about needing to go beyond what people say and drilling down to what is true. But we also need to recognize that the “truth” gets filtered through our beliefs, attitudes and values to the extent that disagreement about it exists. It happens with reporters and editors and it happens with readers.

Interestingly, the context for discerning the truth in political discourse includes the acceptable practice of exaggeration that exists in that discourse in a political campaign. As a free nation we actually value the ability to exaggerate to make political points, ranging from our use of humor to our use of hubris. It’s just politics, right? Plus, we have this ability to criticize our government in ways that are unimaginable in other parts of the world where political oppression exists, and cherish it.

And, of course, there are those beliefs, attitudes and values that news consumers bring to the table when determining the “truth.”

I am reminded of when I covered City Council meetings as a reporter many years ago. During one particular  stretch in time a couple of members on one council I covered had a habit of making off-the-wall statements from the council table.

The statements often were not grounded in fact, nor where they pertinent to any business at hand so they didn’t need to be reported, it seemed on the surface. But shouldn’t voters know their elected representatives made these statements during public council meetings? A “yes” answer, of course, would mean exploring the false statements, which would take time that could be used to report on something else that actually was a relevant matter.

Which gets us to Rosen’s assertion that “the drift of professional practice over time was to bracket or suspend sharp questions of truth and falsehood in order to avoid charges of bias, or excessive editorializing. Journalists felt better, safer, on firmer professional ground – more like pros – when they stopped short of reporting substantially untrue statements as false. One way to describe it (and I believe this is the correct way) is that truthtelling moved down the list of newsroom priorities. Other things now ranked ahead of it.”

One of those things, which is not stated in Rosen’s piece, is that notion of how reporters spend their time. Industry cuts in resources – a seemingingly tireless excuse but a truth – has left us with fewer resources to fill newspaper pages, television reports and, now, news websites. If citizens expect exaggeration is part of the political process, won’t they simply take that into account as they determine whether the speaker is being truthful? And couldn’t that implied knowledge be an acceptable shortcut to getting everything reported that needs to be reported?

Not really. Even acknowledging the exaggeration leaves you wanting to know the rest of the story – that which really is true. No matter how much you debate it, that’s the bottom line — and the acceptable goal.

*NOTE:  An earlier version of this blog item referred to Rosen as a member of the SourceMedia Board of Directors. Although we’ve announced the appointment, I’ve been informed by our company honchos that Rosen is serving as an advisor until his board membership can be approved by the shareholders.

Legislative leaders tell us they don’t expect a 2012 repeat of the drawn-out drama we saw in the Statehouse last year.

Agreement on key issues early on could set a good tone for taking on other issues in the session, House Speaker Kraig Paulsen, R-Hiawatha, said in a story for The Gazette. Iowa newspaper industry lobbyists and I met with Paulsen and House Majority Leader Linda Upmeyer, R-Garner, in December and he was optimistic then that legislators had no interest in enduring a prolonged session again.

A lot budget work was done last year, leaders have said, so less to argue about exists. Another thought is that many issues got more than ample airings last year and went nowhere, so no need exists to rehash them. Plus, it’s an election year. People weary of how last year’s General Assembly dragged on with considerable breaks in action until the end of June will want to get out of Des Moines.

At least that is the thinking as the Iowa Legislature’s next session begins.

The Gazette once again is primed to let you know how the session progresses, with coverage from our Statehouse veterans Rod Boshart and James Q. Lynch and also Lee Enterprise newspaper Des Moines bureau chief Michael Wiser.

The Gazette and the five Lee newspapers in Iowa are sharing Statehouse reporting again in 2012. All of our readers benefit, with the best possible reports on how things that matter in our lives are affected by decisions made in Des Moines.

You can expect from The printed Gazette newspaper daily reports on the top issues being addressed. We will have, as in the past, a Capitol Report page that keeps you up to date, and will be able to catch day breaking news out of the Statehouse at TheGazette.com.

The focus this year will be on jobs creation, taxes and spending, Republicans say. They control the House. Republicans and Democrats, alike, say they want to improve the delivery of mental health services in the state. And Democrats, who control the Senate, say they also want to focus on jobs and are willing to work with Republicans on other key matters, although they also say they want to deal with areas of agreement, not disagreement.

Hopefully you’ve had a chance to follow a series of reports The Gazette has been publishing, leading up to Monday’s start of the 2012 session. Our stories have examined proposals for state spending, property tax relief, what gasoline tax we could end up paying and delivering that desired mental health reform.

The Sunday Gazette ran a front-page story about hot button issues that could work their way into the session. Here is a link to the story, which came from Michael Wiser of the Lee papers and which was shared with The Gazette under that Statehouse agreement.

These are the items that may or may not determine if legislative leaders’ hopes of a shortened session come true.

Legislative primers:

-

• A look at the results map shows Mitt Romney getting his support from urban Iowa and Rick Santorum getting his support from rural Iowa. It will be interesting to see if that pattern continues in other states.
• Determining a headline with such a close race so close to deadline in time for the start of the printing press made for an interesting challenge. One early thought for The Gazette newspaper was: “Triple header”. It was a work in progress. The end result: “Iowa’s triple header.” Ron Paul didn’t tie with the other two but he was within striking distance.
• The Iowa GOP caucuses may have been more about losing than winning. The leading three are close enough that each can claim victory. But the others have ground to make up in New Hampshire.
• Making up that ground is doable. The winners in Iowa were supported by only one of every four people (Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney) casting votes or, in Ron Paul’s case, one of five.
• Support for the candidates actually boils down to who is supported by the people were selected as delegates to county conventions. We know that some caucus participants simply voted in the preference poll and went home, not understanding the system Republicans use when caucusing in presidential election years.
• A big decision for Republicans appears to be whether they will gang up against Mitt Romney or gang up in support of him. Rick Santorum figures to be interested in how that plays out.
• Worth asking is whether the Iowa caucuses were held too early, given that voters still aren’t sure who they want to support. Before jumping to the answer of that, however, it also is worth asking whether weeding out some losers earlier in the process was a benefit.

-

This certainly has been an interesting Republican caucus. The Democrats in Iowa likely are enjoying watching the scrum.

Coverage from Eastern Iowa

Gingrich finally arrived almost an hour late, pumped by the campaign appearance he just had been at, and he gave the board full attention with sharp and informed answers. For all the wait, it turned out to be a good session.

Of interest, less than 24 hours before the Jan. 3 Republican caucuses, was Gingrich’s effort to define the other candidates seeking the same presidential nomination he seeks.

Ron Paul? Not a serious candidate, Gingrich said. “So I don’t think about Ron Paul.”

Rick Santorum? ”It’s good to be the guy who wasn’t attacked,” Gingrich said about the fellow Republican who surged past him in the last opinion polls taken before Tuesday night while Gingrich was the subject of attack ads. “I don’t begrudge anything that happens to him. He’s a good guy.”

Mitt Romney? Ah, the tension spot, thanks to ads the super PAC called Restore Our Future has been running in Iowa that take full measure against Gingrich. “Mitt Romney is a serious person. And as a serious person, he has some responsibility to set a decent standard. And he couldn’t show these ads he’s running to his grandchildren with any sense of pride.”

Romney has responded to Gingrich’s concerns, and his reliance on Restore Our Future. But Gingrich made no effort to hide his contempt for the ads. Are Romney and Restore Our Future campaigning fairly with the ads? I asked Gingrich. The answer was quick: No.

The other Republicans have been busy on the campaign trail in Iowa, too. The high stakes game comes to a head in Iowa Tuesday night and then moves to New Hampshire so the candidates are working the Hawkeye state hard.

For some Iowans, the shift to New Hampshire cannot come too soon.

I took a call Monday from someone who asked The Gazette to publish all of the numbers of telemarketers who have been interrupting Iowans at home or by cell with telephone calls during the Christmas holiday season, asking for support for this or that candidate, or to take a poll, or to push a town hall meeting. I told the man my phones rang off the hook last week, all from politicians. I’d get a call on my land line, then a few minutes later on my cell phone.

You guys sure get a lot of telemarketing calls, my son-in-law who lives in Minnesota observed while at the house for our family Christmas. Yeah, that’s Iowa in the caucus season, I reminded the former Iowan.

I told the man who called The Gazette on Monday we cannot get all of those numbers in such a short period of time but to hang on one more day. A few previous minutes exist for candidates to define themselves, and also their opponents in Iowa. Then, finally, people can make their choices and head home, where the phones ought to stop ringing for awhile.

[UPDATED ON 1/26/12] A reader suggests using this site http://www.callercenter.com for finding numbers from which telemarketers call. The numbers are reported by people who get calls.

Romney takes Iowa

Gingrich takes Iowa

Paul takes Iowa

Bachmann has strong showing in old-home Iowa

Santorum surge surprises GOP

Fact is, we may not have a headline declaring a meaningful winner. The reason: a close vote involving two or more candidates can be viewed as a win by each candidate. A lead of only a few percentage points in Iowa can be erased quickly in New Hampshire during the marathon race to the Republican nomination for president.

Those involved in the selection process know this but casual observers caught up in the numbers may not: those opinion polls showing two or three candidates running a couple of percentage points apart aren’t predicting winners. Lots of people can be winners in the nation’s first presidential precinct caucuses of substantial merit.

We are gearing up to tell you about it Tuesday night online and Wednesday morning in The Gazette. We’ll work with KCRG-TV9 to provide caucus coverage at our special site, IowaCaucus.com. We have been sharing reports with Iowa’s Lee Enterprise newspapers leading up to the caucuses but I suspect we’ll contribute plenty from our staff the night of Jan. 3 just in Eastern Iowa and where campaigns and media outlets will focus in Des Moines.

Here is a look at our plans for what you will be able to see Tuesday night at IowaCaucus.com, which is accessible through TheGazette.com and KCRG.com.

*   *   *

• Live stream reports of the night’s activities, some of it exclusive for online, some of it from broadcasts on KCRG-TV9 and KCRG 9.2. Gazette political reporter James Q. Lynch will be our expert in residence, sharing his knowledge. KCRG-TV9 news anchors Bruce Aune and Beth Malicki will host a KCRG 9.2 telecast from 7 to 8 p.m. News anchors Ashley Hinson and Nicole Agee take over from 8 to 9 p.m. for an online only webcast. Then, at 9 p.m. Aune and Malicki return for coverage on KCRG-TV9 and KCRG 9.2. You can view each telecast on the websites’ live stream.
• Lynch will be busy. He will be on a live chat with University of Iowa political science associate professor Cary Covington and Mount Mercy University communication associate professor Joe Sheller. Join the conversation about events as they unfold.
• A running display of what people are sharing about the caucuses on Twitter.
• Updates on vote totals from all 99 Iowa Republican Party caucuses.
• Stories, photos and video as they are filed.
• Information you want to share. I wrote about this a few weeks ago and we have heard from some interested people. More people are welcome to share what is happening in the caucuses. Look on the IowaCaucus.com website for the Get Involved feature. It’s easy to submit your observations for consideration to be published.

*   *   *

While all of this is going on we will seek clarity for the report in Wednesday morning’s Gazette. We want to give you something worthwhile with your morning breakfast or cup of coffee. The strength of newspapers during events like the caucuses is their ability to deliver insight that you can digest after learning the initial results.

The campaigns and national media will move to New Hampshire, South Carolina and the super states. We’ll still be here, though. We have plenty of other news to explore for those of you ready for something else in Iowa.

Yeah, we know a lot of you are ready for something else. But being able to help chose the president of the United States in the personal way available in Iowa is special and worth the attention.

Many years ago I dug through some December 1898 issues of the Iowa City Weekly Republican for a column I wrote when I was The Gazette’s Iowa City editor. In one particular issue I read about a Morse area farmer named Thomas Flynn. The newspaper reported that Flynn “became exhilarated by the winter air, and ‘went down to Jericho and fell among the thieves’” who beat him and a companion and stole $25 from Flynn.

I wrote about this episode, and others, noting how newspaper writing was far different then from what you read now. Flynn could not identify who beat him, the paper reported. “He was conscious but not very clear in his mind, owing to indulgence and a wicked gash on the right side of his head over his eye,” the newspaper said.

That “indulgence” the newspaper artfully noted was a big deal at the turn of the 19th century. The head of an entity called the Iowa Anti-Saloon League had its sights set on what it called a problem in Iowa City back then – the bar scene. The group’s leader, the Rev. H.H. Abrams, sued several bars that he said were selling alcohol illegally.

The style of writing may have been different all those Christmases ago but some of the issues seem to be familiar.

Christmas 2011 column

I went back to the archives last week to write a column for the Sunday, Dec. 25, Gazette. It was an exercise in personal indulgence that yielded some interesting insights into the city of Cedar Rapids 100 years ago. One of the episodes I am sharing in the column also relates to over-indulging in alcohol during the holiday season:

It involves a guy named Robert Kunzman, who went to the Cedar Rapids Police Station the morning of Dec. 24, 1911, to report that a blind horse was in the stall where his horse belonged. “He was certain he owned a much better house, with two good eyes, and came to the conclusion that it had been stolen,” the Cedar Rapids Evening Gazette reported.

A few hours later A.G. Moorhead showed up at the police station to report that his horse, too, and a wagon had been stolen.

Police investigated and learned that Kunzman had been in what the Evening Gazette called “a condition where all horses looked alike” the night before and had taken the wrong horse and buggy. “He started across First avenue (sic) bridge, ‘the blind leading the blind,’ when the horse ran into the side of the bridge and stopped,” the newspaper reported. A friend took Kunzman and horse and buggy to Kunzman’s home, while a policeman found Kunzman’s horse in the street.

“Kunzman insists that he walked home Saturday night, and has no idea as to how the blind horse came to be in his barn,” the Evening Gazette reported on Christmas Day, letting all of its readers enjoy a holiday chuckle at Kunzman’s expense.

The story still has legs 100 years later. Happy Holidays.

I spent most of Wednesday talking with others about the piece, checking archived material and then making up to my wife for a long day at the office by taking her out for dinner. Surely the furor would simmer, I thought, but I ought to blog something. This is 2011, after all, and everyone else is blogging about the paper of which I am the editor.

The beast, it seems, is in no danger of dying off so that we can move on to more important matters — and those matters exist. I’m certain I will not be the last person to write about Bloom’s piece.

My observations are from 55 years of Iowa life. I spent three others in Minnesota, either attending school or working. I’d elaborate on living in Minnesota but Iowans make Minnesota jokes, as do Minnesotans about Iowans, and the market for picking on a state right now is not booming.

Reporters and columnists who appear in The Gazette have provided plenty of information about what the front page of the 1994 Easter Day Gazette displayed. No need to belabor that.

However, worth noting is why I wanted to pore through our archives at The Gazette. I wanted to do this because some folks who have been here a long time had memories of seeing the kind of headline Bloom described. The notion was in the back of my mind, as I’ve talked with Bloom about it personally — he brings it up a lot — and many years ago at one of his classes while speaking about journalism, in general. I agree with him that a declarative headline, “He is Risen,” plastered across the page of a newspaper would not be news and, in fact, would be inappropriate in a newspaper whose mission is reporting the news instead of making faith statements.

So I wanted to check archives thoroughly so that we could state factually what we found.

What I am confident about is:

• The headline is not spread across an Easter Sunday front page at any time from 1986 to 2006. We checked multiple years. A small two-column Easter greeting exists in the 1994 edition below the masthead to the left with a Bible verse that contains the phrase “he is risen.”.
• The mistake about the headline is a small matter given the scope of the ultimate message being conveyed in the Bloom piece. We just wanted to correct the record, which, by nature, always seems to amplify a situation. We wanted to state what exists because:
• The reference was intended to be an example in the context of what hicks Iowans can be. The Gazette is, has been and continues to be serious about having high standards for what it tells Eastern Iowans.
• A moment in time from a distant past does not illustrate a larger picture about the present. In The Gazette’s case, Easter greetings were on front pages in years past. Not every year, but some, and they have not been there since 1994. Cedar Rapids and Eastern Iowa have vibrant communities of Muslims and Jews, especially, but also other faiths. We try in our faith and values reporting to understand them all. To use the “He is Risen” example to illustrate the way Iowa, and The Gazette, functions in 2011 doesn’t jive with reality.

Other points:

• Bloom’s article was offensive. It read like a piece from an outsider, amplifying stereotypes to make certain points for audiences outside of Iowa who relate to the stereotypes. It wasn’t written for an Iowa audience. Bloom describes things in his piece that I must have missed while growing up in towns of 250 people, 3,500 people and, finally, 950 people where my high school graduating class had 43 students. We didn’t have T-shirts bearing out names, but that was a different era. (see comment above about making judgments about the present through a moment in time in the distant past. Real distant past in this case.)

The article’s snarkiness gets in the way of the fact that:

• It describes truths about the state that Iowans need to understand and address in order to grow.
• Iowa, indeed, is homogeneous in much of its rural area — I grew up in rural communities and witnessed it. The state suffers from brain drain. Small towns are struggling to survive.
• Some years ago, when I was a reporter at The Gazette, a story idea we wanted to pursue but didn’t in lieu of others was an examination of elderly people living alone because their children had moved away, and in towns no longer as vibrant as when they were younger.
• And that high school graduating class from which I emerged? The school district allowed a religious-based ceremony in the school gym in addition to the regular graduation ceremony. It was in 1971. The practice no longer exists, the result of a more enlightened time about people’s sense of cultural diversity even in a small Iowa town.

Finally,

• I find hateful attacks on Bloom and also calls for him to be fired to be offensive and uninformed.
• Firing a university professor for writing something that rankled you strikes at the heart of academic freedoms and the exploration of the truth.
• I’ve seen some of the hate that has poured out in comments and on message boards. Also, Bloom wrote to me in an e-mail on Wednesday that it is coming in personal phone calls and e-mails.
• Go ahead, be offended, and tell people about it. But if you want to prove Iowans are hicks the best way to do it is to take the bait and act like one, or to throw your lot in with the hatemongers out there zeroing in on that fact that Bloom is Jewish. Some company to be in.

Now, I have to write a column for Sunday. It was going to be about efforts Iowa journalists are going to take next month to shed light on your rights to open government. I guess that will have to wait while this tempest continues to brew.

Some of what’s out there

“Bloom has lived in Iowa for 20 years. I’ve lived here three times that long and have never been to a tractor pull. In fact, I can’t think of any friends who have been to a tractor pull but then that’s not something my friends would mention out of fear of ridicule.

“In fact, just last Sunday, when my friends and I could theoretically been at a tractor pull, we were instead at a poetry reading in Mount Vernon (pop. 4,000) where I live…”

– From a website called SteveIowa.com.

—

“Gazette reporters have been working to debunk – or at least to respond to – professor Steve Bloom’s Atlantic article that hickified most of Iowa.

“Todd Dorman, a columnist, has been responding with opinion on where Bloom went wrong in his generalities, while reporter Patrick Hogan was early to respond with questions of accuracy…”

– From a blog by Robert (Ted) Gutsche Jr., a doctoral candidate at the UI School of Journalism and Mass Communication

Gutsche sent me this in an e-mail Thursday morning:

“You might want to check this out: The Atlantic’s description of Iowa in 1900 is quite similar to the one in 2011. Have things really not changed or is this about something else?

http://blog.robertgutschejr.com/?p=497

—

E-mail exchange from Dec. 14, 2011, with Garance Franke-Ruta, senior editor, The Atlantic

—

Articles

UI President Mason issues open letter about The Atlantic article.

Iowans outraged over article critical of rural state: Reuters report.

A journalism professor derides Iowa, questions its clout and unleashes a bipartisan fury: Washington Post.

Iowans Respond to Stephen Bloom: Blog by Garance Franke-Ruta is the senior editor at The Atlantic who edited Bloom’s piece.

Hi Lyle,

Thanks for your note and for clarifying that. I trust your records are accurate, despite Prof. Bloom’s memories.

Sincerest regards,
Garance Franke-Ruta
–

On 12/14/11 8:59 PM, “Lyle Muller” <lyle.muller@thegazette.com> wrote:

Dear Ms. Franke-Ruta:

Thank you for correcting the record about what The Gazette printed on an Easter Sunday front page that Stephen Bloom referred to in his Atlantic essay about Iowa. No headline stating “He is Risen” was spread across any Easter Sunday front page of The Gazette between 1986 and 2006, according our archives. The headline would not have appeared in one edition of the newspaper but not the ones in our
archives.

The Gazette reference in the article is a small one given the scope of the ultimate message being conveyed in the Bloom piece. Plenty in the article exists about which to dispute but truths also exists about which the people of this state – of which I am a native – need to consider.

Sadly, the article’s sarcastic tone and need to address an error detract for the moment from larger issues that Bloom identifies, such as Iowa’s aging population and small towns that have lost their vibrancy. Even so, our newspaper, as well as others in Iowa, will continue to report on them.

Lyle Muller
Gazette Editor

319-398-8210

We’d be glad to share your experiences at political events leading up to the caucuses, too. You don’t have to be a supporter of any candidate and, in fact, we’d want you to tell us if you are. All you have to be is interested in the political process, events unfolding in Iowa that you’d observed and would like others to know, access to a website and the ability to put your thoughts in writing in a way that informs others.

I’m telling you this to plant the seed in your mind. I am encouraging you to check out the easy steps that give you access to our caucus website, www.IowaCaucus.com, and allow you to be a citizen reporter for this important event that focuses on our state. The steps will be at the end of this column.

We are seeking people who plan to attend the caucuses; see something they think the rest of the region, state or country should know and then want to share it. What information do we seek? Interesting things people are saying or to which they are reacting. Unique twists that strike you as unusual and worth sharing. Disputes that emerge, and how they get resolved.

Do you have an interesting photo? Send it our way. We’ll share it in the same way we will share your stories – on our website but also in The Gazette printed newspaper if the story is big enough to warrant such treatment.

Here’s the easy rule of thumb: If you see or hear something and ask yourself or a friend, “Where is a reporter when you need one?” you could report it yourself. We send a lot of reporters and photographers to cover political events and the caucuses every four years but we cannot be at every one of them.

A few guidelines:

• We are looking for your observances on what you hear and see. We will edit for grammar, style and redundancies.
• We will vet information you submit before publishing, as we do with our regular reporting staff.
• No opinion pieces please. Readers periodically submit to us community contributions that are opinion pieces rather than news stories. We ship some to the Opinion Page for consideration as letters to the editor. Some submissions I’ve seen are opinion letters from various parts of the country that simply call on people to support a particular political candidate. I delete those if I cannot verify they are from Iowa and also because the purpose of our community contribution set-up is to spread news, not opinion.

Which gets me to how you can be a citizen journalist and report what you observe at the caucuses, or at any of the events leading up to the Jan. 3 caucuses.

Go to www.IowaCaucus.com. In the right-hand corner you will find a feature called “Get Involved: Submit your story now.” From there, the directions are easy. Give your submission a title and then write the story in the space provided. We have a prompt from where you can attach photos or documents. We will take it from there. Part of the submission process includes telling us who you are because you take the full credit if we publish your story.

It is that simple.

If you have questions feel free to e-mail me at lyle.muller@thegazette.com.

One of the stated reasons is that so many debates with the top candidates for the Republican nomination have been televised on news channels that the campaigns see scant reason to spend money on ads that frame their messages.

We hear a lot from critics who say the news media focus on minutiae about someone’s appearance, sexual habits or who’s ahead and not on what candidates are trying to say or their stands on issues. Yet, we’ve had  dozen televised chances to hear Republican candidates explain their visions and to respond to accompanying challenges. That adds up to plenty of opportunities to learn about candidates’ issues.

The candidates apparently believe they are getting efficient chances to reach potential voters. The Bloomberg story pointed out that the top nine Republican hopefuls spent $53 million through September on advertising instead of the $132 million spent by the same time in 2008.

I often think you do not learn as much from debates as you do when examining candidates’ statements on an issue or their pattern of policy decisions and behavior. But we at least have been able to see these GOP candidates articulate positions, defend those positions and perform consistently under public pressure. And with so many debates candidates get second chances to clarify and even recover from gaffes that could consume a campaign. The shelf life for embarrassing an opponent diminishes and the ability to see a broader picture grows.

To help you know more about these candidates The Gazette newspaper is going to devote a page each Tuesday leading up to the caucuses to breaking down where Republican candidates stand on several issues. The first report this week will focus on jobs and the economy. In subsequent weeks we’ll look at tax policy, fiscal responsibility, health care and hot topics that arouse political passion, such as abortion and immigration.

Late this month we’ll also publish in the newspaper a guide to how the caucuses work, too.

You can follow The Gazette reports on the caucuses at IowaCaucus.com.

The Gazette has banded together with Lee Enterprises’ Iowa newspapers to cover all of these issues and we will work with them through the caucuses, as well. Pooling the experienced political reporting talent from The Gazette and the Lee papers — the Quad-City Times, Muscatine Journal, The Courier in Waterloo and Cedar Falls, Sioux City Journal, and Mason City Globe-Gazette — should give all of our readers more depth in the coverage of these important caucuses on our presidential selection calendar.

The Republicans get the spotlight for now because Democrats will nominate President Obama for re-election. His turn for more direct involvement in the campaign is on the horizon.

Attention is growing in Iowa because we are less than a month away from the Jan. 3 caucuses. Personal appearances are picking up, especially in western Iowa by candidates, but also around the state for others with an interest in presidential politics.

Indeed, this is the holiday season — the one for Iowa’s quadrennial winter sport of presidential politics.

Links to a couple of columns by Gazette columnist Todd Dorman.
Entangling Religion and Politics Diminishes Both
I’ve got good Newt and bad Newt

This is my Sunday, Dec. 4, column in The Gazette newspaper, available early Sundays in our e-edition.

What are the most important things on your school year calendar and what are students at your schools talking about? I asked the group.

I was leading an exercise at an Iowa High School Press Association conference in Iowa City. The students in the room produce their high school newspapers or yearbooks.

The big dates on the calendar seemed benign if you are far removed from those days: high school football playoffs, prom, pending graduation. The same could be said for some of the things students were talking about at the time: teachers, specifically teachers they don’t like; getting from one class to another; homework; gossip – lots of gossip.

But other thoughts may turn your head. They ranged from having to deal with the deaths of more than one classmate to pregnant girls trying to get through high school. Pretty heady stuff. Some of these students have endured a lot of personal matters while trying to grow up and they think serious thoughts about those matters.

Almost all of these high school students writing for their school paper or yearbook are headed for other careers. They just like the extracurricular activity that comes with writing, shooting photos or editing something their peers will read.

This is true even at a time when many school districts facing tight budgets increasingly consider the school paper or yearbook to be expendable.

What a disappointment that is because these students’ experiences at their school papers and yearbooks will benefit them as they move into whatever career excites them. Applying skills like discovering, writing, reading, editing, presenting ideas, being aware of what’s important and, especially, thinking analytically and critically are vital regardless of the career.

In some instances, these students explore serious matters and express themselves in ways that relate to young people in way parents, teachers, administrators and casual observers cannot.

Hopefully, some of them will consider journalism as a profession. I heard a lot of good thinking in that room.

We’ll be printing more than 470 pages for each newspaper on Nov. 24. Our promotions folks are running a contest, asking you to guess how heavy the paper is. Send your guess to www.TheGazette.com/contests.

Our plans include printing some sections ahead of time and then starting the press earlier Wednesday night so that we can print all of those pages, stuff them into bundles and get them on the road to the various spots in 16 Eastern Iowa counties where you can buy The Gazette.

It’s refreshing that despite all of our advancements in the digital age the Thanksgiving Day paper remains popular. Those ads are called tip sheets at my house when my grown daughters are able to be together for Thanksgiving. They treat going through the ads as a solemn order of late afternoon business.

One note if you are interested in buying a copy of the paper on Thursday: you’ll need to go to a store that sells our paper. We won’t be cramming newspapers into vending machines because so few of them would fit that it makes more sense to send you to one of the stores willing to carry The Gazette. This beats going to a machine that sells out quickly.

One news story planned for Thursday of note is a piece reporter Orlan Love is putting together on Iowa National Guard soldiers who get to spend Thanksgiving back here in Iowa this year after spending the holiday in Afghanistan last year. “The thrust of the article will be to contrast a major holiday in a combat zone with that same holiday at home surrounded by loved ones,” Orlan says in a written description of what to expect. We’ll have the story at www.TheGazette.com.

A recent staple in the Thanksgiving Day paper has been the Call of the Colors report. This is a display of photos that show Iowa’s fall colors. Look for it in the extended Accent section. Professional and amateur photographers participate and submit entries to The Gazette. The program is so popular that photographers were submitting entries online before we made the call for their pictures.

Gazette features editor Carly Weber reports that about 70 photographers submitted roughly 200 images. The winners’ work will be revealed in Thursday’s paper.

Also on Thursday, we will wrap up a series of special sections called Now Hiring that provide information on professions that have available jobs and tips for those of you looking for work. The featured profession this week is sales.

This is a busy week for sports fans, too. You may miss in your Thursday morning paper a few late Wednesday night sports scores. The NBA isn’t playing but the NHL has three games, two on the west coast. But we’ll have you primed for Thanksgiving Day football. Green Bay fans, contain yourselves.

And when Thursday is done, the University of Iowa gets its crack at border opponent Nebraska in college football. We will have a special Game Day section on Friday. Black Friday.

Now that’s another story.

The poll also shows Ron Paul and Mitt Romney with strong support but Newt Gingrich, who fared well in a Bloomberg News Poll released the previous day, with relatively weak support.

Of course, this raises the question of whether the news media focus too much on the “horse race” aspect of the campaign. It is a common question, often raised by people who cannot help themselves from checking on the race but also by people frustrated when news outlets do not deliver enough information about candidates’ political positions and how those positions may impact average folks.

I posed this question on TheGazette.com on Wednesday, Nov. 16:

Is the horse race reporting valuable to you during the presidential campaign?

The question attracted plenty of criticism.

You get no argument from me when making the point that simple “horse race” reporting, without context and explanations for numbers, is lazy. I agree, too, with the notion that the bombardment of polls can feel like overkill.

But reports with perspective on who leads a poll at a certain point in time have value. The ISU polling reported in The Gazette on Nov. 17 goes deeper than who has the most support among Republicans a little less than one year before we get to vote for president for real. It delves into the backgrounds of those supporting specific candidates seeking the GOP nomination, including economic status, education, Tea Party support, gender and religion.

The polling is producing data the ISU researchers will use to analyze how the race for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination unfolds. But even before that analysis emerges with the benefit of information still to come, campaigns are using these kind of data every day to track how their candidates are doing with targeted groups. They use such data to help drive decisions you see played out by candidates in public.

In that sense, knowing what they know enhances political reporting. The information becomes public instead of privileged.

Besides, people care about who has the most support at a particular point in time because of the purpose for campaigning — winning.

“Good morning,” the email to The Gazette’s customer service department began. “In your recent marriage section of the newspaper, not the Milestones, you have it stated that Jacob L. Krueger married Nicole M. Luna on October 1st, 2011. That is not correct. The proper name is Jason L. Krueger.

“I should know, I’m the one that married her and our marriage license reflects the proper name.  Can you have that corrected?”

The newspaper corrected the mistake and I sent a note to Jason, apologizing for the error. His use of humor made his correspondence one of the more interesting pieces I’ve received in the last month, when so many people have had an ax to grind about politics or something else they are passionate about … like, well, politics.

And so today I share, as I do periodically, some of the comments that have come across my desk recently, either through emails or via comments readers submit in writing to us when we seek feedback in billing statements.

Really like the Pickles cartoon. Can see why it is #1.

Thank you, but I need to note something else about Jason Krueger’s email. It turns out I contacted him through a wrong e-mail. His address had the numbers “33” in them and I inadvertently typed “22” into the “send” space. Fortunately, the woman who got that errant email saw in the message thread the earlier e-mail Jason sent to our customer service department. She forwarded my message to him with a note, “This was sent to me by mistake.”

I had to get that off my chest. Back to other readers’ comments.

Your readers are interested in the history of Linn County, especially Cedar Rapids. More columns, including photos, by Mark Hunter would be appreciated.

We are grateful for the periodic historical features Mark Stoffer Hunter and Jim DeLong write and for the Today in History notes we run daily. People like to reflect on news of the past. I personally like poring through old photos and news stories so much that I lose track of time when I enter our archives or a library. But we try to be current with the newspaper so I don’t see us adding any other features at this time that look back.

Too much world news.

I included this comment because I usually report those to the contrary, from people who say we don’t have enough nation and world news. Our focus remains local.

OK, one other thing about Jason Krueger’s email. I got a response from him that he, indeed, took the error in the paper with humor but that there was more to the story. That person who forwarded my e-mail to him happened to have the same first and last name as his former wife, who still has the same last name he has.

This prompted Jason to ask the woman if she is his ex.

She is not. But he wanted to share that twist with me, and I emailed back that I would be sharing it with all of you.

I also feel as though I need to share my best wishes to Jason’s wife, Nicole, on her marriage to someone with a good sense of humor.

Run down the tallies by precinct from Tuesday’s voting and you’ll see Republican Cindy Golding holding serve in several precincts. In fact, she collected 415 more votes from people going to the polls on Tuesday, Nov. 8, than Democrat Liz Mathis received. Yet, she lost to Mathis 13,184 to 10,283, according to unofficial results pending a canvass. That’s a 2,901-vote margin.

What happened?

Mathis bagged the win with absentee and early voting when 5,422 people voted for her. That is 3,316 votes more than the 2,106 Golding collected. (Constitution Party candidate Jon Tack got 42 early votes to go with his total of 151 overall.)

You could argue that rainy weather kept people from the polls but you’d have to concede that the weather would be equally bad supporters of both Mathis and Golding. Rather, Democrats had strong motivation to keep control of an Iowa Senate in which they hold a 26-to-24 majority and apparently did something about it early so that nothing that happened Tuesday would stand in their way.

Lively live chat

A lot of people chimed in on the election Tuesday night during a TheGazette.com live chat, even as our website crashed at such an inopportune time. A web host for data on our site broke while results were coming in. Still, those in the live chat were engaging and interesting.

Gazette columnist Todd Dorman and UNI political science associate professor Christopher Larimer were on hand to interact with people interested in the race.

Among the interesting tidbits:

– Larimer pointed out that party registration for Senate 18 as of Nov. 1 was approximately 30.3% Democrat; 30.9% Republican; 38.6% No party. “How will No Party folks vote, and many cross-party voters will we see?” Larimer asked. The answer: they helped Mathis, who has name recognition from her days now past as a television news anchor on KCRG-TV9, which is owned by the same company that owns The Gazette, and before her TV9 stint, KWWL-TV.

– Also from Larimer: “Why is it that Democrats don’t like to vote on Election Day relative to Republicans?” From a participant: “I think Democrats place more of an effort into absentee ballots. Its easier to lock those up and then focus on undecided / independents instead of driving your base to the polls.” From another: “Maybe it is the fact they have to work that day.” And yet another, with humor: “Chris, it’s to keep their postal carriers employed.”

– From Linn County Supervisor Brent Oleson, a Marion Republican, about whether Republicans would be open to an early voting drive: “Chris, no weather concerns.  GOP voters tend to like the formality of going and casting their vote.  Younger GOP is open to absentees.” By the way, Golding won several Marion precincts.

– From John Hedgecoth, a Des Moines lawyer and frequent Democratic Party advisor: “The race in SD18 was a simple matter of organization and grassroots politics. The D’s piggybacked on the rapidly growing Obama ’12 organization and were unified with not much else going on statewide, while the R’s were in disarray in the Sen caucus and are divided among their many presidential candidates, not to mention distracteby the caucuses 9 weeks from now.”

If you are interested in all of the comments here’s a link to a replay of the entire live chat.

Here’s a link to Larimer’s blog at IowaCaucus.com, where he writes about the Iowa caucuses.

And, of course, a link to 24-Hour Dorman.

Holding a card in his hand, he walked to the back of Linn-Mar High School Auditorium, where he shoved the card at KCRG-TV9 news director Kara Kelly and demanded to know why we wouldn’t ask the candidates his question. KCRG-TV9 and The Gazette were co-sponsors of the debate.

I joined the conversation to ask him to quiet down so that people could hear the candidates. I told him the program almost was over and that there would be no time for more questions. I offered to take the card, though, and while he was not satisfied, his voice went to a whisper and he gave me the card. Written on it was:

“Why can’t the people of Iowa vote on gay marriage” (sic)

Try as they may to distance themselves from that topic Golding, the Republican candidate, and Mathis, the Democrats’ offering, cannot avoid it. They tell us that Tuesday’s special election for the state senate seat is about attracting business, growing jobs, improving public education and keeping taxes low are the important. And, of course, control of the Iowa Senate.

But whether or not Iowans get to vote on a constitutional amendment that defines marriage as being between a man and woman resonates with plenty of passionate people. And those people are watching this special election that decides whether Democrats maintain a 26-to-24 edge in the Senate.

And, yes, Jon Tack is running from the Constitutional Party and an unpredictable win by him would provide a 25-to-24-to-1 split. It isn’t going to happen. But I at least wanted to acknowledge that three people are seeking the seat, not just the two from which the winner likely is to be selected.

Tuesday night is answer night and The Gazette and TheGazette.com are ready to tell you how this all falls into place. Our coverage plans include not just the Senate District 18 race but also municipal elections throughout Eastern Iowa. This includes the hotly contested races for Cedar Rapids City Council as well as council seats and, in some cities, mayoral races in other parts of the Corridor and region. We’ll work with our colleagues at KCRG-TV9 for the most complete report available from Eastern Iowa.

If you are interested in discussing the results Tuesday night, Todd Dorman and I will be joined by Christopher Larimer, University of Northern Iowa associate professor of political science, in a live chat at www.TheGazette.com, starting at 9 p.m. I have tried to think of a good stopping time but how quickly the results are known will dictate that.

The live chat will focus on the Senate District 18 race that has attracted such wide attention but we also can talk about other races in which people are interested. Feel free to join us.

And that question about gay marriage? I asked it of Golding and Mathis during a joint session they had with The Gazette Editorial Board on Oct. 31. Golding wants a vote; Mathis does not think it is necessary.

UPDATED 10-31-11: I made a reference in my last blog post to reading some articles The Gazette’s Dave Rasdal wrote in days’ past about the Lincoln Highway.

Here is why: The Gazette is producing a book of some of Rasdal’s favorite columns. Called “Ramblin’: Reflections of Hidden Iowa,” the book will be released Nov. 18, in time for people looking for a good Christmas gift in addition to a good read.

I now have a web address that helps you order a book. Here is the link.

A small team has been working on this project since last winter. Rasdal has pored through thousands of columns he has written over almost 30 years, selecting those he likes best.

Now, we finally are ready to release the book in stores and through special orders with The Gazette. Orders at The Gazette are being taken at either 1-800-397-8333 or 319-398-8333.

]]> http://thegazette.com/2011/10/28/gazettes-ramblin-column-gets-the-hard-cover-treatment/feed/ 0 http://thegazette.com/2011/10/23/highway-1-talk-evokes-nostaglia/ http://thegazette.com/2011/10/23/highway-1-talk-evokes-nostaglia/#comments Sun, 23 Oct 2011 12:00:43 +0000 Lyle Muller http://thegazette.com/?p=308656 For years cities and towns along state and federal highways looked forward to the motorists delivered to the doorsteps of merchants, restaurants and any other enterprise that needed customers.

These would be those hard-to-believe days long ago, when fast-food chain restaurants didn’t dot the landscape and make every town look the same and Interstate highways didn’t zip people past your town at 70 mph, or faster. You’d count your blessings back then if you owned a restaurant and a traveler arrived in your town during lunch time.

The most famous of those highways arguably was U.S. Route 66. But U.S. highways bearing route numbers like 6, 20, 30, 52, 61, 63, 69 or 218 sent their fair share of visitors across parts of the country, and through Iowa towns.

On the statewide level, well-traveled roads have been Iowa highways 3 and 9, each spanning the state east-west in northern Iowa, Iowa Highway 2 doing the same in southern Iowa or Iowa Highway 4 that runs north-south in western Iowa.

That list includes Highway 1, which works its way north-south on Iowa’s east side.

Area leaders want to change Highway 1’s path that now goes through downtown Iowa City. News of that came last week as I happened to be reading some stories written years ago by Gazette columnist Dave Rasdal about the old Lincoln Highway. The Lincoln Highway’s coast-to-coast route includes the heart of Iowa.

The combination of the Highway 1 discussion and Dave’s stories — he likes to go nostalgic about the gas stations and cafes that flourished along the road in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s — got me to thinking about the evolution of how we view these two-lane highways. The fact is, running through town doesn’t mean all that much these days.

Bypasses take motorists around the small towns and motorists like that. Some towns and their businesses catering to travelers suffered at first but the customer base already was disappearing without highway bypasses. People increasingly were grabbing fast food at familiar spots.

And they kept going.

Heck, people can pack a meal and eat in their fully-equipped automobile and keep going. The key is: they keep going.

Still, some people get attached to things, including road designations, and any kind of proposed change arouses their interest. That especially is true the longer you get used to something, and Highway 1 is 85 years old.

The Gazette has an editorial on the matter in the works for early this week. We’ll welcome your responses. No decision to move the designation to other roads in the area has been made.

But two things to think about exist:

1. Highway 1 adds to traffic in neighborhoods and congestion in downtown Iowa City.

2. And the University of Iowa’s draw is so strong that people will travel to it or other nearby destinations regardless of the number painted on the road sign.