The Daily Iowan is more than just a print paper. While the DI will print a newspaper one time a week beginning this year, our dedication to covering untold stories and the news will still be present 24/7.

Following years of newspapers downsizing their print editions and focusing on web content, the DI is shifting more emphasis to digital this year, too. This change, however, won’t affect the storytelling that the DI’s staff of talented reporters and editors are committed to achieving.

The state of local journalism is not for the faint of heart. In 2020, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a 57 percent drop in newspaper newsroom employees over nearly two decades. The DI has an important role in Johnson County and Eastern Iowa to continue providing reliable news coverage and teaching the next generation of journalists.

The DI’s weekly and longer print issue on Wednesdays allows time and space for reporters to produce quality, long-form journalism.

Along with the DI print paper’s fresh redesign, we will continue to produce digital content daily that includes multimedia elements with reporting by Daily Iowan TV to expand our storytelling capabilities.

We aren’t a daily paper anymore, but we are a daily news organization, and the DI’s journalists are still doing high-level work. To mention just a few recent accomplishments, the DI won three Pacemakers for excellence in newspaper, website production, and multiplatform journalism in October. DITV also received general excellence, best sportscast, and best newscast for broadcast journalism in the state.

Moreover, the Daily Iowan Documentary Workshop released “Chasing Greatness: Wrestling Life,” a documentary about the Iowa men’s wrestling team that took almost two years to produce, and the film that follows University of Iowa graduates during the pandemic titled “Lost in the
In-Between: Graduating into 2020.”

These efforts aren’t printed on paper, but they are evidence of our continuing commitment to the DI’s legacy of producing quality journalism.