Iowa Center for Public Affairs Journalism (https://caucus.iowawatch.org/category/blog/page/2/)
The world is smaller, and more fearful about others, an Iowan whose family took in a Vietnamese family in the 1970s says in this conclusion of a five-part serial about that experience some 40 years ago.
Vietnamese refugee Phat (Patrick) Nguyen, revealed stories about his life in Vietnam before coming to Iowa and the family’s experience in the Malaysian refugee camp, along with stories about living in the United States. It was a story of friends, a home and hope, but he left one special person behind.
In this installment of a special five-part series Wayne Buck says in an ABC News interview from the 1970s that he thinks the Nguyen family, Vietnamese refugees living in Iowa, soon will be financially independent. Young Jeanne Buck, meanwhile, says her family can say it saved eight lives.
The Pulau Bidong camp, where the Nguyen family lived for six months, was only 1 square kilometer in area and housed approximately 18,000 Vietnamese refugees by January 1979. After the Nguyens moved to Iowa that number continued to grow.
Cheryl Mullenbach, whose columns about Iowa history were a weekly feature at IowaWatch.org in 2015, is returning to her old spot with new columns each Saturday, beginning June 4. Her new column will be called “Iowa History.”
Saigon had fallen and Vietnamese refugees needed a new home. Iowa opened its arms in the 1970s. A former IowaWatch reporter’s story rekindled memories for one Iowan whose family took in some of those refugees. This five-part series by Clare McCarthy tells that story.
Former Boston Globe Spotlight investigative reporting team member Matt Carroll told an IowaWatch audience about the importance of dogged investigative reporting before the audience viewed the Oscar-winning movie “Spotlight” in Cedar Rapids on Thursday, May 5.
The IowaWatch Connection radio program collected seven awards, including three for first place, for large market radio reporting at the 2016 Iowa Broadcast News Association convention in Waterloo, Iowa, on April 23. Each week program host and producer Jeff Stein examines an IowaWatch story in depth during the 23-minute program. The program’s winning entries were:
First place: Political coverage, for a series on the mood of the electorate leading up to the 2016 Iowa precinct caucuses. First place: In-depth/series, for a two-part report on criminal justice reform. Part one.
Panelists have been confirmed for the Iowa Center for Public Affairs Journalism-IowaWatch public forum on Monday, May 2, in Iowa City that examines whether or not limits exist for speech and expression on college campuses. The forum is part of a spring IowaWatch reporting project, “Making Boundaries: The Impact of Defining Boundaries for Speech and Expression on College Campuses.”
The Iowa Center for Public Affairs Journalism-IowaWatch will hold a public forum on Tuesday, May 2, in Iowa City that examines whether or not limits exist for speech and expression on college campuses. The forum is part of a spring IowaWatch reporting project, “Making Boundaries: The Impact of Defining Boundaries for Speech and Expression on College Campuses.”
The public forum will feature four to six guest panelists who will discuss how limits on speech and expression align with the learning experience. The Iowa Center for Public Affairs Journalism-IowaWatch was a participant in an April 2, 2016, one-day conference on this topic that the Newseum Institute hosted in Washington, D.C.
“We know this is a hot topic on a lot of college campuses in Iowa and also nationally,” IowaWatch Executive Director-Editor Lyle Muller said. “We’ve sent reporters to several Iowa campuses to ask whether or not people really have freedom of speech and expression in all instances. We want to share what those reporters learned and advance the conversation so that people have a clearer idea on their own of the role free speech has in our society and our learning experience.”
The public forum will be held from 6:30 to 8 p.m. Prairie Lights Bookstore, 15 S. Dubuque St.