A non-profit newsroom points one way forward
And why it shows you should diversify your media diet
Something unusual is happening in a Des Moines news operation these days. They’re celebrating, and the boss is taking the staff out to lunch. That’s a rare event at a time when journalists are losing jobs, coverage is being cut back and revenue is hard to come by.
The celebrating is happening at Iowa Capital Dispatch because its parent company, States Newsroom, just added bureaus in North Dakota and Utah, the final two states needed to have news operations in every state capital.
The boss won’t have to take out a second mortgage to buy lunch, because the newsroom has only five people on staff, including the editor, Kathie Obradovich. The small but mighty staff launched Iowa Capital Dispatch in January 2020, right before the pandemic. And it’s a non-profit, subsisting on support from the parent company and voluntary paid subscriptions.
“It’s gone much better than I ever dreamed,” says Obradovich, the long-time political columnist and editor at the Des Moines Register. More than 10,000 people subscribe to their daily newsletter, twice as many as the year before. Website pageviews topped 5-million last year, two-thirds more than the year before. Thanks to a grant, they added a reporter last year to focus solely on higher education coverage.
They’ve made a name for themselves by focusing on state capital coverage, breaking important stories that mainstream newsrooms have missed. “Hardly anyone needs to explain who we are anymore,” Obradovich says.
“We found areas of coverage that no one else is doing, like state regulatory boards. Our coverage of nursing homes has found some horrific stories.”
The focus on statehouse coverage is a double-edged sword. A five-person staff means there’s a lot they don’t cover, like sports. They don’t have a photographer on staff. But the narrow focus on state coverage not only benefits its own readers, it also benefits mainstream newspapers and their readers. Iowa Capital Dispatch allows any newspaper in the state to use their content for free, so long as it’s attributed to them. “It helps expand our reach and get our name out there,” Obradovich says.
KCCI-TV’s website recently started carrying Iowa Capital Dispatch stories. I’ve seen some editions of the Register with multiple stories coming from Iowa Capital Dispatch.
Obradovich feels she can help both journalists and news consumers. “Newspapers all over the country are struggling and can’t afford statehouse reporters. We provide quality content to newspapers AND their readers who aren’t getting it anywhere else.”
She has a powerful weapon in her newsroom in Clark Kauffman, another former Register reporter. He breaks stories as naturally as another Iowan named Clark hits all net. “He’s a machine. Dogged,” she says. Kauffman digs through public records to find hugely important stories as well as little gems that are amazing to read.
His important stories have included one that went national. Kauffman was the first to report on a lawsuit alleging Waterloo Tyson meat plant managers made bets on how many of their workers would get sick during the pandemic.
He found state inspectors ignoring the law on how often hotels must be inspected. He’s found terrible conditions in some Iowa nursing homes. He reports on filthy conditions at local restaurants.
And there are headlines that ANY reporter would love to have found:
· Altoona massage therapist sanctioned for sexual contact with client
· Dentist is accused of performing a prison root canal while intoxicated
· School employee wins jobless benefits after marijuana bust
I call those “holy sh*t” stories. Who wouldn’t want to read those?
Obradovich credits the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative, of which this column is a member, with helping solve another problem – providing quality commentary for the Capital Dispatch. She runs selected columns from the talented writers in the Collaborative.
The success of the Iowa Capital Dispatch points to a lesson for all of us who are news consumers. While the Dispatch concentrates on state government coverage, Obradovich concedes, “We can’t do it all. Consumers need to diversify their media diet to get a variety of viewpoints. That’s a good thing, because people tend to get siloed.”
That means that serious news consumers can continue reading Iowa Capital Dispatch and the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative for free, but if you value the in-depth coverage and the variety of viewpoints, you might pick one or two to support financially, too. Any amount of support encourages the journalists and helps find at least one path to the future in a difficult media landscape.
One of the joys of being in the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative is reading stories that move me. This week, I point you to Art Cullen’s column “Immigrants are not the problem.” It includes a couple of sentences that just make so much sense, that cut through the clutter. From Storm Lake, Art writes:
“We need their resolute determination to work — anyone who would walk from Ecuador to El Paso to find freedom is the sort of neighbor you want. The most patriotic people I know are immigrants. You love freedom when you have witnessed Communist or religious oppression first-hand.”
The full list of Iowa Writers’ Collaborative members:
Thanks lots, Dave, for recognizing The Capital Dispatch gem, and its fantastic writers. The Dispatch has become the newspaper Iowa depends upon.
The Iowa Capital dispatch is my go-to site for solid legislative stories. It does an excellent job and I’ve told that to Kathie Obradovich.
The news organization does not need a sports reporter but any quality cellphone these days takes quality photographs and video.
When working on a video documentary in 1995 about Latinos in Iowa, I discovered the same thing about immigrants from Latin America—love of family, hardworking, strong spirituality. And my 30 years of international media training in several Central and South American nations with journalists reinforces that perception. We should welcome them.