Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
A recently introduced bill could have far-reaching impact on the U.S. sugar industry, including American Crystal Sugar, a farmer-owned cooperative that locked out 1,300 Midwest workers on Aug. 1.
The chairman for Herman Cain’s Iowa effort says the campaign “relied more on the word of farmers than Washington regulators” in deciding to run an ad containing claims the Environmental Protection Agency says are false.
The Iowa Senate will remain under the control of a slim 26-25 Democratic majority when it reconvenes in January 2012.
Both Democrats and Republicans in the Iowa House have launched online tools that allow Iowans to submit ideas for cutting waste from the state’s budget.
In doing so, they have embraced the wisdom of ‘Web 2.0′ marketing: the key to driving traffic to a web site is not paid advertising, it is simply building an interactive tool that a lot of people will want to use.
When visitors go to the Democratic and Republican sites, they see a link to submit their recommendations to legislators, but they are also exposed to each party’s message. And visitors who decide to submit recommendations are more likely to come back to the web site later to see what others have recommended and to continue to participate in the discussion because they already have a stake in it. So it’s good all around.
Remember back during the caucuses, when then-Senator Barack Obama’s campaign staff pushed as many Iowans as they could to sign up for “My BarackObama.com” accounts? It was the same type of strategy. The campaign was able to accumulate vast lists of online contacts, and they kept visitors coming back by making their web site as interactive as possible.
It will probably be a while before state representatives can achieve anything close to the online success Obama enjoyed during his campaign, but this was an admirable first step.
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