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Blizzard impacted paper delivery, but subscribers could still read the news

Winter wasn’t done with us yet. After we were teased with some beautiful sunny 60 degree days Mother Nature sent a blizzard our way. The snow fall totals weren’t that substantial, but just a few inches of snow combined with sustained winds of 30 miles per hour and gusts in the 50 plus mile range made travel after dark nearly impossible. Many of you woke up the next morning to find the sun out and little snow on the ground and thought “ what was all the fuss about?” There were blizzard warnings and programming interruptions by your favorite weatherman telling you how bad ...

The high cost of being cheap

The Iowa Legislature is at it again, trying to eliminate publication of legal notices in newspapers. And it will cost Iowa’s citizens way more money than it saves. Republican sponsors say it will save money for cities and counties, but as editor Art Cullen noted in his editorial last week, scrapping public notices will keep Iowans in the dark about the public’s business. Legal notices are the minutes of city council and board of supervisors meetings, the bills that they pay, the people that they hire and other official actions they take. They are the notices that alert you if a ...

Lives impacting lives

As of 2026, LifeWorks has been serving individuals with disabilities for 60 years. It continues to make a big difference. Anniversaries shouldn’t just measure years, but their impact too. I’ve been reflecting on LifeWorks’s impact, especially because March is Developmental Disability Awareness Month. Yes, services impact individuals, but what about the staff? What lessons have been learned? What perspectives have shifted? A sample of just eight employees told quite a story. (To protect the confidentiality of individuals served, names of individuals have been changed to either ...

The architecture of liberty: returning to our educational roots

Every day, I find myself returning to a single, grounding philosophy: Know where you have come from, know where you are, and know where you are going. It is a simple compass, but it is the only way to ensure we aren’t just drifting with the political winds of the day. When we apply this to public policy, we must start with the most fundamental building block of a free society: education. There is a vibrant debate in our country about who “owns” education. Is it the federal government? The state? The district? To answer that, we should begin by looking at our “Supreme ...

John Perkins’ legacy – helping save St. Edmond Catholic School

The legacy of John Perkins can be seen and heard at St. Edmond Catholic School on every school day as 800 students from pre-kindergarten through high school file into classrooms each morning for another day of learning. In the wake of Perkins’ death Feb. 9 to cancer at the age of 76, ...

Your newspaper has a vital role in the community

Your local newspaper, The Messenger, has historically been a little bit of everything from a news and information perspective. It has always provided local news that is uniquely sourced, but it also offers ample amounts of state, national, and world news. It publishes television listings, comics, business and stock news. It reports local high school sports, college sports with an emphasis on Iowa universities, and professional sports. As media has fragmented and evolved, national and world news are available in many forums, including broadcast media, national talk radio, and the ...