In just a few months, Iowa is poised to become the center of national attention when the state’s Republican Party holds the 2024 Republican Iowa Caucus. But for journalists who cover politics in the state, the first electoral test for presidential hopefuls in the country has been a constant drip.
“We’ve actually been covering it for most of the year,” said Erin Murphy, the Des Moines bureau chief of The (Cedar Rapids) Gazette. “We’ve been neck-deep in it for a while now.”
For Ty Rushing, chief political correspondent for Iowa Starting Line, the caucus marks the grand finale. “The candidates are here all the time,” he said. “Like, I probably see the Florida governor more than Floridians.”
Journalists who have been covering the candidates in Iowa have navigated unpredictable schedules and little one-on-one access to politicians, all while balancing small staffs and the need to focus on other statewide stories. It has made for an intense year of reporting.
Approach to coverage
This is Murphy’s third caucus cycle, which is a good thing for him, he said, because he’s a bit more experienced and used to it.
“It’s a balancing act because you want to, as a local journalist, cover these candidates while they’re on your home turf — in your backyard, so to speak,” he said.
The Gazette, Murphy said, can’t and does not want to cover the campaigns the same way that the national media does. There tends to be a big focus on “who wins Iowa,” he noted.
“And so what Iowa does is gives all the candidates their chance to get in front of voters, and make their case,” he said. “And Iowa weeds out that field. It whittles that field.”
Murphy is interested in how The Gazette can cover these candidates in a way that provides value to its readers.
“So that’s kind of the challenge and approach that I try to take into these cycles,” he said. “We try to tell stories that we feel are useful to our readers who are Iowans, and especially Iowa Republicans who are going to make a big decision in a couple months here.”
Murphy is part of a two-person team at The Gazette, along with Tom Barton, the newspaper’s deputy Des Moines bureau chief based in Cedar Rapids. The newspaper shares content with Lee Enterprises, which owns papers like the Sioux City Journal and the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier. That agreement gives Murphy and Barton a de facto three-person beat structure with Caleb McCullough, the Des Moines Bureau Chief at Lee Enterprises.
“So the three of us essentially work together so we’re never covering the same thing,” Murphy explained, adding that it enables them to share stories with their respective publications.
Despite having a small staff of five (including her), Iowa Capital Dispatch editor-in-chief Kathie Obradovich said the news organization has the advantage of “sister media outlets” across the country, including in impactful states like New Hampshire, Nevada and Georgia.
The Iowa Capital Dispatch is an independent news organization that publishes state government coverage with investigative journalism, particularly focusing on the “consequences of policy, political insight, and principled commentary.” It is part of States Newsroom, a national nonprofit supported by grants and a coalition of donors and readers.
States Newsroom launched a weekly newsletter in June called Countdown ‘24, which rounds up election news from its outlets. The newsletter is overseen by Obradovich and Robin Opsahl, an Iowa Capital Dispatch reporter covering the state legislature and politics.
“We’re rounding up the top election news that all of those outlets are doing, so that people who are kind of uber-interested in politics right now can see all of that great information, reporting from all these states in one place,” she said. “Because there’s a lot of candidates, there’s a lot of trips, we’re strategizing how we can make sure that voters get what they need to know.”
‘No typical day’
Some days, Murphy is out on the field, following a candidate as part of his work for The Gazette. It could be a single-candidate event with multiple stops, or an event with multiple candidates. There are also days when he’s in his bureau office, working on a story about the caucus or a statewide issue.
“I’d say a typical day is that there is no typical day,” said Murphy.
On the October day he spoke with Poynter, Murphy said he wasn’t focused entirely on the caucus. But the beat, he said, is still there — and so are the responsibilities that come with it.
“And there’s still state boards and commission meetings. We’re not in the legislative session right now, but those wheels of state government are always turning and there’s always something going on,” Murphy said. “So it’s an interesting time during caucus years because the normal beat doesn’t really slow down and now you have these candidates around, and you’re covering and following them around some days, too. So it’s a real variety.”
At Starting Line (owned and operated by the civic media company, Courier Newsroom, whose properties often provide coverage in support progressive causes), Rushing builds his schedule around candidates and their availability. He recalled one particularly intense workday on Aug. 25, when he began his day in Indianola, a city located about 14 miles south of downtown Des Moines, for a Vivek Ramaswamy event. He spoke with voters and covered the entrepreneur and presidential candidate’s speech. The next stop was in Pella, about an hour away. Rushing said he tried to leave before Ramaswamy’s bus left, to secure a press spot at the next event.
“Now remind you: This is the same week as the Republican debate, so all of his events are packed because he stood out so much into the debate,” Rushing said. “And a lot of people had that curiosity factor.”
The journalist made it to Pella in time. Barely.
“It was just packed to the gills,” he said. “I was actually one of the last four people who were let in. It was that packed.”
Rushing reported out the event. Then it was time to rush to Newton, a city in central Iowa. Ramaswamy’s stop there was at a Pizza Ranch, a fast casual chain.
“If you’re a political candidate trying to impress small town Iowa, you go to Pizza Ranch,” he said. “But it also works because they have some of the biggest banquet rooms in some of these communities.”
The restaurant’s parking lot was so full that Rushing had to park his car at a local museum. He covered that event and a quick media scrum afterward.
Ramaswamy had a fourth event that day, but Rushing felt his coverage sufficed. The result from that day was a written story, a few TikTok videos and related graphics.
Rushing said the Iowa Starting Line has placed a greater emphasis on TikTok over the past year. As of mid-October, the news website has nearly 29,000 followers on the short-form video hosting service. He said the Starting Line’s audience appreciates its unvarnished takes.
“The thing that we found is our audience loves the most is like raw insights. “So what we do is, when we’re at these events, we’re capturing the back-and-forth between the candidate and question-askers, or an interesting statement the candidate there may say,” he said. “And then we’re just kind of throwing those out there and let people see.”
If there are candidates in town, Obradovich said she sends reporters out to cover them. As much as she loves following candidates, she’s no longer usually the one to do that.
Her team really wants to see when candidates take questions from voters. She said they look for what questions are asked and how candidates answer them.
“The candidates often deflect criticism about not meeting with journalists by saying, ‘Well, we meet with voters to answer their questions all the time.’ But you know, a lot of times those interactions look like people asking for selfies in a line after an event,” Obradovich said. “So the public question-and-answer sessions are important. We’re also looking closely at how the candidates interact with politicians here in the state.”
She said another focus is watching how the Republican candidates are playing to evangelicals in the state. They’re not really a voting bloc, she said, but a powerful constituency for Republicans.
More changes and hostility, less access
Much like the situation facing journalists who cover politics in Florida, reporters in Iowa face lessened access to, in this case, candidates.
At one point earlier in her career, Obradovich traveled across eastern Iowa with John Kerry during his presidential campaign. She rode with the longtime U.S. senator from Massachusetts and interviewed him between campaign stops.
“That kind of uninterrupted access to a candidate is very rare these days,” she said. “Part of it is because there’s so many more national outlets that have the wherewithal to come to the state, cover those candidate events.”
And the candidates themselves, Obradovich observed, are shyer and less willing to sit down one-on-one — especially with mainstream media reporters.
“And they also won’t sit down for editorial board meetings,” she added. “So access itself is just a lot less.”
But Murphy said the job itself hasn’t changed much. Journalists gather information and turn around a story. But one change he’s noticed is the increasingly hostile attitudes towards journalists — especially on the political beat.
“I will say — knock on wood — I have not had as harrowing experiences in Iowa as I’ve read about other journalists having on the political beat elsewhere in the country,” Murphy said. “But you do see that change in tone at a lot of political events, and a little more aggression towards, or anger towards journalists on the beat.”
Murphy said he’s concerned about the direction of access to the state’s elected leaders. He said there’s been instances in Iowa where they have a governor who has been much less accessible to the statehouse media than her predecessor — especially after the pandemic.
