Posted February 2nd, 2021 at 10:34am by Pat Rynard
State Rep. Ross Wilburn is settling in to his second week as the new chair of the Iowa Democratic Party, starting the work of assembling a new staff for a state party that’s looking to rebound from another poor election cycle. Wilburn’s election, along with making history as the first Black leader of a major Iowa political party, offers the opportunity to bring some real stability to the beleaguered some might say cursed office of the chair of the state party.
If the IDP is still putting framed photos of their past chairs on the conference room wall at the Fleur headquarters, they’ll need to open up an extra wing of the building soon. The chair’s office for Iowa Democrats has been a constantly revolving door of new faces during the past decade, a real problem that hopefully ends with Wilburn’s election.
Posted February 1st, 2021 at 10:56am by Pat Rynard
Iowa Starting Line has some temporary good news to share with our readers we are restarting the website and publishing for at least the next two months. We acquired some funding to keep Starting Line active for February and March while we work through some bigger decisions and seek out a long-term plan for our news site.
Our reporters Isabella Murray and Claudia Thrane are back to work today, and we’ll be posting again shortly on a regular basis. It probably won’t be like late in the campaign cycle in 2020 or the Iowa Caucus where we were putting out five to ten stories a day, but you’ll still get your fill of unique Iowa politics stories here at Starting Line. I also should have more time to write myself in these weeks I have an endless collection of thoughts on the election, though I’ll probably focus more on the road ahead.
“If voters aren’t listening, then what are we doing here?” A Q&A with Pat Rynard
On January 4, political news site
Iowa Starting Line announced it was going on hiatus until further notice. “Good journalism should hold the powerful accountable, but it should do so in reality, not just theory,” Pat Rynard, founder and managing editor, wrote. “And if voters aren’t listening to it, then what are we doing here?”
Rynard launched
Iowa Starting Line in 2015 as a left-leaning news blog for political insiders “a way to bring some balance to the online political conversation in Iowa,” he says. Over the years, the publication evolved into a full-fledged news outlet with a large staff. One year ago, in the lead-up to a chaotic primary election, the
If voters aren t listening, then what are we doing here? : a Q&A with Pat Rynard cjr.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from cjr.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Posted December 18th, 2020 at 5:22am by Pat Rynard
As a very, very long 2020 winds down to a close, I thought it would be good to take a look back at what Iowa Starting Line accomplished in our most successful year yet.
One thing I don’t always do a good job of is publicly touting our successes I’m always cautious about sounding self-serving or boasting. I think when your journalism work is out in public, it can speak for itself.
However, the impact of Starting Line’s work is often far greater than what you simply see online. There are many times every month where there will be a story that ends up on CNN or in the New York Times or on KCCI that I know was a direct result from our reporting. I know that a producer or an editor who follows us noticed something we tweeted, looked into it more and wrote something about it themselves. But if you don’t follow all these social media connections, you might not know how so many storylines about Iowa politics are directly in