La Periodista de Iowa: Columbia Journalism Review spotlights western Iowa newspaper that 'proves that the best counter to online misinformation is human connection'

'Local newspapers are the last bastion of collective reality'

Denison, Iowa community journalists Lorena López and Gordon Wolf talk recently in downtown Denison. (Photo By Douglas Burns)

Former, and very recent Los Angeles Times journalist Jack Herrera has produced one of the more inspired and illuminating features I’ve read on community journalism and its role in democracy with an exhaustively reported piece in the Columbia Journalism Review on Lorena López of Denison, Iowa and La Prensa Iowa Spanish Newspaper, the western- and central-Iowa publication she founded and edits.

The story: “La Periodista de Iowa: At a Spanish-language newspaper in rural Iowa, Lorena López proves that the best counter to online misinformation is human connection.”

It’s Extraordinary reporting. Herrera’s scene-setting and sense of place are remarkable. Lorena López is one of my closest colleagues and he captured her presence and charisma and talent and journalistic drive brilliantly. It’s one of the best profiles I've read on anyone, in any capacity, in a long career.

I spoke with Herrera for the piece. Here is one takeaway:

In Iowa, where Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric has won voters over—from 2012 to 2020, no other state swung so dramatically Republican—the coverage in La Prensa shows how politics can tangibly affect their lives. Douglas Burns—a fourth-generation journalist from nearby Carroll, Iowa, and a friend of López’s—told me that she is single-handedly keeping local news alive in the region, and tearing through online misinformation by force of will. “I would argue,” he said, “that she is the most influential community journalist to inhabit a newsroom in western Iowa in the history of the state.”

The Columbia Journalism Review feature examines the depths of misinformation in the nation, and within Spanish-speaking communities.

More from Herrera

In recent years, election watchdogs have repeatedly raised alarm about Spanish-language fake news in particular—perhaps because Latinos make up the largest minority group of voters in the United States. (There are now more than thirty-six million eligible to vote, up by some four million since 2020.) Researchers at the University of Houston have concluded that we’re in the midst of a “Latino misinformation crisis.” They found, for instance, that a solid third of Latinos in Texas believe that “the deep state was out to ruin the Trump presidency.”

Community newspapers are singularly and essentially positioned as we struggle to preserve democracy and truth itself.

As Burns put it: “We have to rebuild the trust in news from La Prensa back up, not from the New York Times down.” In the face of rampant misinformation online, he added, “local newspapers are the last bastion of collective reality.”

Tax-deductible donations can be made to fund La Prensa through the Western Iowa Journalism Foundation, a 501(c)3, by clicking here or sending checks to:

The Western Iowa Journalism Foundation
15302 140th Street
Breda, Iowa 51436

(Douglas Burns, a fourth-generation Iowa journalist from Carroll, is a member of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. Read dozens of the most talented writers in Iowa in just one place. The Iowa Writers' Collaborative spans the full state. It’s one of the biggest things going in Iowa journalism and writing now — and you don’t want to miss. This collaborative is — as the outstanding Quad Cities journalist Ed Tibbetts says — YOUR SUNDAY IOWA newspaper. Please follow other writers on the roster below. )

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