Newsroom Frequently Asked Questions

Things you should know about what we do and how we do it.

The Gazette strives to gather and share news using the best journalistic practices. We strive to keep you informed and to make our region and state a better place.

The news landscape has changed significantly through the years, and advances in technology have also made it easier to publish information to broad audiences. But our goal is to provide relevant, accurate and timely information so that you know what’s happening and can make decisions for your family.

Here are some common questions about who we are, why we do what we do and some of the factors that go into our decision-making about the news.

How do we decide what to cover?

We have reporters who are always monitoring things like state and local government, education, energy & environment, public safety and courts, entertainment and the arts, business and industry as well as high school and college sports, among others. Reporters and editors regularly look at developments on these topics and pursue stories based on impact, relevance and uniqueness. We focus on stories that impact our core communities of the Cedar Rapids and Iowa City metro areas, though we also look to identify stories of major statewide importance. We strive to understand national and international events through a lens for Iowa impact.

It’s an inexact science and a lot of factors go into decisions. There are more stories happening in eastern Iowa than we have the resources to cover. This leads to some pretty hard decisions. Things like staff schedules, event timing and expected outcomes at the events can also be factors in the decisions.

How are national and world stories reported?

We focus our attention and our reporting resources on Iowa stories and rely on syndicates and wire services to produce some of the national and international news that you see in The Gazette. We prioritize stories that impact Iowa or have broad national or global implications.

What are the wire and syndicate stories that we publish?

The news stories we don’t report ourselves come from The Associated Press, a news cooperative supported by for-profit and nonprofit members. We also utilize the Washington Post-Bloomberg wire service for some national stories and the McClatchy-Tribune wire service for some of our features and living section content.

Our editing team decides which stories rise to the front page each day, and we also decide which wire stories to add local context to.

What is our deadline for print editions?

We save our latest deadlines for pages with local stories on them, and we send pages to the printing press on a staggered basis through the evening. If a major story happens in the evening, we work to get as many details as we can into each edition. If a story doesn’t rise to front-page importance, it will wait. Our nightly cutoff for the print edition is about 8 p.m. each night.

What other sources do we routinely look at for Iowa news?

We have sharing agreements with Lee Enterprises and the Des Moines Register allowing us to use stories from those newsrooms on a regular basis. These arrangements help us supplement as strong of a statewide report as possible. Lee Enterprises has operations in the Quad Cities, Muscatine, Waterloo, Mason City, Sioux City and Council Bluffs. The Des Moines Register is based in Des Moines.

We also routinely look at non-profit journalism organizations including the Iowa Capital Dispatch, Kaiser Health News, and the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting. We collaborate with and share stories from the Mississippi River Basin Ag and Water Desk as part of our ongoing coverage of environmental and agriculture topics.

From time to time, we also collaborate directly with additional Iowa-based media outlets on specific projects.

What’s the difference between opinion and news coverage?

A news story contains objective facts and does not take an opinion-based position on the facts. This does not mean there aren’t opinions in news stories. News stories often report newsworthy opinions of community leaders and members of the public because these opinions are often part of the news. News reporters and editors strive to keep their own opinions out of the reporting, and a reporter’s opinion has no place in a news report.

There are a few exceptions to this, which includes reviews of restaurants or performances, in which the commentary about the restaurant or event is part of the reason for coverage.

Additionally, we strive to make sure that you know when you’re reading opinion content. While it can be easier to distinguish in a print edition, algorithms and feeds on digital sites can make this harder to discern. Editorial content is not meant to tell you how or what to think, but is mean to show a variety of perspectives on issues of importance.

How do we handle corrections?

We strive for accuracy at all times, but mistakes and errors can and do happen. Sometimes we report things incorrectly. Other times the information that official or reliable sources share with us is incorrect. If we published it, it’s our error and we want to correct it as soon as we can. We make changes to the online versions and put notes at the top of the story when there’s a major change to a story. If the mistake was grammatical or spelling, we’ll simply correct the error. We print corrections if the mistake appeared in print. If a mistake was only online, we do not print a correction.

You can help us by reporting errors as you see them. Reporter emails are at the bottom of every local story, and we encourage you to point out errors if you see them.

Who owns The Gazette?

The Gazette is an independent and 100% employee-owned organization. The Gazette one of the businesses that is part of Folience.

The other Folience companies include Lifeline Emergency Vehicles based in Sumner, Iowa, and Cimarron Trailers, based in Chicashaw, Oklahoma, and Manhattan, Kansas.

The Gazette also owns several smaller community newspapers across Eastern Iowa.

Are there questions you’d like to see answered here?

We’d love to know what you’d like to know more about. You can submit your questions by emailing [email protected] or calling 319-398-8219.