Center News

Institute for Nonprofit News names IowaWatch’s Suzanne Behnke to national Emerging Leaders Council

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Suzanne Behnke, executive director of the Iowa Center for Public Affairs Journalism and its news outlet, IowaWatch, has been named to the Institute for Nonprofit News Emerging Leaders Council. INN announced Thursday, May 21, that Behnke is among 11 leaders selected for the third Emerging Leaders Council, which identifies and supports leaders who will advance the nonprofit news sector throughout the next decade. 

Suzanne Behnke, IowaWatch executive director-editor

“This is a terrific opportunity to network, to support nonprofit news and to find ways to strengthen IowaWatch,” Behnke said. “I am excited to join a terrific group of journalists.”

Behnke joined the Center in 2019 after spending two years at the Des Moines Business Record, where she was an editor and contributor.  She also is a journalism and communications instructor at Simpson College in Indianola. Behnke, a native Iowan, has a long and rich news reporting and editing history in the state. She was a reporter, copy editor and page designer at The Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier from 1997 to 2000 before joining The Des Moines Register staff.

Evans: The benefit that comes from perspective

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The shackles could not hold us. The Evanses cast them aside last week and traveled to Bloomfield and Cedar Rapids to visit our parents. There are few social distancing concerns when you are standing quietly in a cemetery with your spouse, and your thoughts. Every time I make the trip to Bloomfield and stop at the neatly tended expanse up the hill from the Fox River, there are many topics I wish I could chat about with Mom and Pop. Most would deal with family – what Sue and I have been up to, our two daughters, and how much we wish Mom and Pop could have the pleasure of knowing these delightful young women.

Center News

Tell us about your mental health struggles amid COVID-19, other disasters

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We’re digging into the stressful toll of wildfires, hurricanes and floods — and now COVID-19 on top of them. We need your help. Every year, weather-related disasters ravage communities across the United States, creating scenes traumatic and, increasingly, familiar. Deadly firestorms throughout the West. Historic floods in the Farm Belt. Catastrophic hurricanes with record rains in the South and along the East Coast.

Evans: No hugs and casseroles make this more difficult

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We always can use more humor. Even during a pandemic. At least that was my justification for a “thought” I shared with the world on social media last week. A Michigan woman posted on Twitter that she was writing a condolence card when her 5-year-old son interrupted and wanted to know what she was doing. “I’m writing a note to say how sorry I am that my friend’s mom died,” the woman replied.

federal aid

Health and human provider relief fund allocations to Iowa hospitals, as of May 13, 2020

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This story is part of a nationwide collaboration of Institute for Nonprofit News members examining the affect COVID-19 is having on rural health care. IowaWatch reporting in this project was made possible by support from the Solutions Journalism Network, a nonprofit organization dedicated to rigorous and compelling reporting about responses to social problems.

Relief payments distributed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services through the Health Resources and Services Administration have gone to the following Iowa hospitals. The funds come via two 2020 laws — the CARES Act and the Paycheck Protection Program and Health Care Enhancement Act — during the COVID-19 pandemic. These data are of May 13, 2020, and can change because of updates. Healthcare providers have 45 days from the day they receive each of the fund distributions to attest to receiving payment and agree to terms and conditions, Susan Horras, vice president for finance policy at the Iowa Hospital Association, wrote in an email to IowaWatch.

Regulation

FDA clears Iowa sanitizer maker of making false claims about COVID-19

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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration cleared an Iowa hand sanitizer company of making misleading claims about its product’s ability to “mitigate, prevent, treat, diagnose, or cure COVID-19.” Prefense LLC, of Muscatine, faced an April 23 FDA complaint that made the company the nation’s first manufacturer to get an FDA warning letter claiming the firm marketed a hand sanitizer with unproven COVID-19-related claims.

Fighting COVID-19 in Iowa

COVID-19 scuttles jobs, internships for Iowa’s college students

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Paige Marsh went through five interviews before getting a job offer from a national insurance company, headquartered in Des Moines, back in January. “I have been in touch with the company every month since I signed my offer letter,” Marsh, a senior business administration major at Wartburg College,  said. “And then I just got the call about the company freezing all new hires until 2021.”

She will continue to search for work in the meantime. College students, like Marsh, who are ready to hit the job market, now find positions hard to find or internships have been postponed or canceled. The jump to the “real world” is typically full of anxiety and uncertainty for seniors — and this year is no different with COVID-19 unsettling the job market.

college

Job hunting advice

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A virtually connected group of professionals, Keeping Educated Youth in Des Moines, hosted a webinar April 24. Included were tips for how seniors can go about obtaining a job in a pandemic. 

Tips for seniors from the panel:

Network. Getting on LinkedIn and connecting with people who are in your preferred career path is a great start to getting into the industry. Expect hiring to return. Students should expect after the sharp decline in hires that there will be a sharp incline in hires when work restrictions are lifted.

coronavirus

Evans: Coronavirus secrecy erodes the public’s confidence

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The relationship between government and the governed is a delicate arrangement, even in the best of times. Government wants us to pay our taxes. It wants us to obey its laws and directives. Citizens, in turn, expect certain things from government, things like good schools, parks, law enforcement and protection of the public health and safety. Trust and accountability are key elements in this arrangement between government and the governed.