Center News

Sunset on the Farm returns to support IowaWatch’s mission

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Iowa City, Iowa – Corridor area residents are invited to enjoy great food, wine, music, and scenery at an annual fundraiser to support IowaWatch.org. Get tickets here. Sunset on the Farm will take place Thursday, September 23rd, from 6 to 9 p.m. at Walker Homestead just outside of Iowa City. 

This event will consist of unlimited pizza and salad, s’mores for dessert, access to a cash bar, a silent auction, and live music from the Mission Bluegrass Band. Tickets are $40 for adults and $20 for children over 5. 

IowaWatch.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that provides Iowa’s news outlets with top-quality in-depth reporting for free while training future journalists. Tickets and other donations at Sunset on the Farm go toward supporting Iowa-focused investigative journalism such as the recent “Small Town Solutions” project. This is the first Sunset on the Farm since September 2019.

How IowaWatch alums are shaping COVID-19 coverage across the U.S.

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Elderly folks are particularly vulnerable to COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. So are jail and prison inmates living in close quarters that allow the virus to easily spread. 

That means elderly inmates face a double whammy of risk. So why was Illinois offering so few reprieves to elderly inmates at a time when the state was letting out hundreds of other prisoners to alleviate crowding? And why does Illinois incarcerate so many older folks to begin with? 

Emily Hoerner is answering such life-and-death questions for Injustice Watch, a Chicago-based nonprofit news outlet that exposes institutional failures that obstruct justice and equality, where she has reported since 2015. 

Hoerner was among IowaWatch’s first interns in 2011 and 2012 as a University of Iowa student, and she is among a long list of IowaWatch alums who are now watchdogging government officials, shining a light on injustices and offering critical information to communities during a pandemic that has upended life across the United States. “IowaWatch was the place where I really first learned about the importance of understanding the nuance in stories.

Open government

Open Government, 1st Amendment Champions From Iowa Pick Up Honors

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IowaWatch honored an outstanding journalist and long-time advocate for newspapers during its seventh annual banquet Thursday night, Sept. 26, at the Des Moines Marriot Downtown. Carol Hunter was given the Stephen Berry Free Press Champion Award for a working journalist, journalism group or journalism educator in Iowa. Margaret Johnson was given the Randy Brubaker Free Press Champion Award for an Iowan who has done significant open records work over several years in a role other than journalism. Hunter has been at the Des Moines Register for nearly 15 years, serving as political editor, news director and now as the executive editor of the state’s largest newspaper.

nonprofit news

Reva And David Logan Foundation Awards IowaWatch Grant

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The Iowa Center for Public Affairs Journalism-IowaWatch has received a $25,000 grant from the Reva and David Logan Foundation for general operating expenses. This marks the first time the Iowa City-based non-profit, non-partisan news center has received a grant from the Chicago-based foundation.

investigative journalism

Podcast: Why Investigative Journalism Matters

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Seldom has so much attention focused on how journalists gather and report news. But news consumers in the 2010s want to know whether or not what they read or hear in the news is true and, in doing so, want to know why investigative reporters pursue stories.

student journalists

Help Us Support Student Journalists

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We at IowaWatch are raising funds to pay stipends to more than a dozen student journalists from six Iowa campuses in an IowaWatch/College Media reporting project. These journalists are interviewing students, faculty members and administrators to learn about this topic and to report it to you later during this spring.