Feb 17

Headline goes here

Posted on Monday, February 17, 2025, at 11:16 AM by Jeff

January 8, 1883, was the last Monday that residents of Cedar Rapids didn’t have a hard-copy newspaper sold at stores or delivered to their doorsteps.

Until today.

Tuesday will be 600 days since I lost my job there.

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Feb 14

Remember January?

Posted on Friday, February 14, 2025, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

Like I said, and say at the opening of the short-takes piece below, it’s been … yeah.

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Feb 11

License Plate Letters — PHX

Posted on Tuesday, February 11, 2025, at 10:00 AM by Jeff


January 31, 2012: Downtown Phoenix is pictured minutes after takeoff from Sky Harbor International Airport. PHX was the layover for a Southwest Airlines flight from Omaha to Austin. To date, it’s the last time I was in Arizona, but it only sort of counts.

It’s possible that Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport is the airport that I’ve been to the most. I have flown to Phoenix from three different Iowa airports and through Phoenix from two more non-Iowa airports. Phoenix was the destination of my first airplane trip, when I was 10 months old.

Yes, I am extremely aware that blog posts have been minimal so far in 2025. Unfortunately, my job requires me to pay attention to the news, and that portion of my life is like this, without finding the marble first.

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Feb 04

US 30 construction starting next week

Posted on Tuesday, February 4, 2025, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

In a very rare move, a construction project is beginning in February. Three bridges on US 30 between Calamus and Wheatland, all turning 70 years old, are going to be replaced this year. The DOT press release says work will start Monday and go into December!

These bridges are original to the 1955-56 relocation of US 30 between Clarence and Calamus. They supplanted the 1931 bridges to straighten US 30 through the Wapsipinicon River area that themselves replaced 1922 Lincoln Highway-era bridges.

One-lane traffic will be controlled by stoplights. Detouring to old 30 is not an option because the 1931 bridge over the main channel of the Wapsi has been closed for some time, not even safe enough for one-lane traffic.

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Jan 30

Meteorologists staying on at KWWL

Posted on Thursday, January 30, 2025, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

When news of what Allen Media was planning to do to local weather desks across the nation got out, the reactions were all the same, and all bad. Even though the move had not been announced publicly, the rumble was enough that news stories were written about it.

A week later, Allen has reversed course, and publicly so. KWWL even carried a message meteorologist Mark Schnackenberg telling everyone he and the KWWL weather team weren’t going anywhere. What that means for meteorologists in other markets who already said their goodbyes, who knows.

As it happens, I was watching KWWL and recorded Schnack’s message, and it appears that’ll be the last thing I record on EyeTV from cable, as Mediacom is switching things off. But that’s another story to come.

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Jan 27

Cedar Rapids’ last Maid-Rite is gone

Posted on Monday, January 27, 2025, at 10:10 AM by Jeff

The Westside Maid-Rite, Cedar Rapids’ oldest restaurant in the same location (1935), closed Jan. 15. I wrote about it on my Substack. It was the feature image in the second new “Flipside” story roundup from the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative that will come out on Wednesdays.

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Jan 23

Noting correction to 2023 news graphic

Posted on Thursday, January 23, 2025, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

I’m not going to redo my graphic from 2023 about newspaper frequency, but since the information that one line is inaccurate has come to light, I need to acknowledge it.

In May 2022, the Ames Tribune announced that at the end of June, publication of the print edition would be reduced to three times a week. This apparently did not and has not happened, at least through the time of this blog post. I e-mailed the Ames Public Library for confirmation and the library pointed me to a Newsbank site. That site lists the local articles on a given day, and those days are still six days a week (Mondays excepted), and that hasn’t been interrupted. For example, here’s Tuesday, Sept. 19, 2023 (“Iowa State’s Campbell accepts blame for Ohio loss”) and Thursday, Nov. 7, 2024 (“See where Iowa State stands in first College Football Playoff rankings).

That graphic will be getting a large update sometime before the end of March.

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Jan 20

License Plate Letters — PDS

Posted on Monday, January 20, 2025, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

The National Weather Service has the rare designation “Particularly Dangerous Situation” for potentially extreme weather. The most recent one issued in Iowa, according to the Iowa Environmental Mesonet, was in a pair of tornado warnings issued for parts of Polk and Warren counties on July 15, 2024.

The NWS Quad Cities office issued a PDS with its severe thunderstorm watch for its entire area (as did La Crosse for three counties) on August 10, 2020, at 11:28 AM CDT — about when the derecho was slamming the Iowa Highway 14 corridor to the west, and about 75 minutes before Cedar Rapids lost power.

Now, we have a Particularly Dangerous Situation in the KWWL and KIMT viewing areas. NPR, and WSIL-TV (Paducah/Carbondale/Cape Girardeau), along with trade publications Cord Cutters News and AdWeek, are reporting that Allen Media Group will dispose of the weather departments of its entire TV station portfolio by the end of March. A meteorologist in Huntsville confirmed it on Facebook.

Each station on the broadcast airwaves must operate in the “public interest, convenience, and necessity.” I would say wall-to-wall coverage of a tornado warning is one of the highest forms of all three. You can’t break into weather on the 8s or a for that.

I joke when meteorologists point out long-extinct towns that still show up on the maps for some reason, places that they’re reading because that’s what’s on the screen. But if someone in Atlanta drops a bad pronunciation of Keokuk or Winneshiek — or, Lord help us, Quasqueton — it’s going to resonate.

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Jan 16

Well, _I_ care

Posted on Thursday, January 16, 2025, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

Cyclone Fanatic forum thread title: “The 3-point streak ends, but no one seems to care”

There’s another piece of college sports I can’t count on anymore, I guess.

The end of Iowa State women’s basketball’s 945-game 3-point streak, which started before Bill Fennelly became coach, before Iowa State joined the Big 12, did at least get a writeup on ESPN.

TBH, IMO, as long as it was more than a two-score lead, we should have at least tried. Thirty-year Twenty-nine-year-and-eleven-month streaks of anything don’t grow on trees.

To add insult to injury, shortly before that game ISU was busted down to “last four in” in the bracketology, which is — ugh — the play-in game, which I strongly believe should not exist in either the men’s or women’s tournament.

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Jan 14

‘Visioning survey’ for southernmost part of US 151

Posted on Tuesday, January 14, 2025, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

There’s only about a 25-mile segment of US 151 in Iowa that isn’t four lanes, but that segment has raised concerns about its safety. There are no turn lanes, and sometimes the line of sight isn’t great. One possibility is to make 151 between Fairfax and Amana a “Super-2” road with passing and/or turn lanes.

The state is seeking feedback through Thursday. (As has been the case for a while, stuff like this goes through an online registration process.)

KCRG has a story about some drivers’ experiences. (As has been the case for a while, I can’t embed, and I discovered that if you scroll down past the video, the video keeps playing but doesn’t reappear when you scroll back up. What the heck?)

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