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.
Though I didn’t find it when I looked after state Rep. Rod Roberts (R-Carroll) announced his candidacy for governor earlier this week, it seems his campaign did launch a Web site at some point since Tuesday.
RobertsForGov.com (Screen capture: 7/24/09)
The site, located at RobertsForGov.com, is not as polished as any of his competitors’ sites, and it uses an Adobe Flash animation for its header, which can create problems for some ‘smartphones’ and for people who do not have fast computers with broadband connections. And it’s fixed to the left side of the browser window, which is weird. But it’s there.
The navigation bar includes a link to a Facebook group dedicated to Roberts’s candidacy. Notably, that is not the same thing as the more modern “Facebook Page,” which allows supporters to sign up as “Fans” of someone or something and displays a link on each fan’s profile page in a prominent place.
And, as Todd Dorman notes, the absence of a Twitter feed is conspicuous, given the platform’s surprising popularity among the other GOP candidates for governor.
Also of note: All three of the press clippings currently listed on the site were written by Iowa Indy alum Douglas Burns for the Carroll Daily Times-Herald, which is Roberts’s hometown paper.
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