Across the country, newspapers are trying to save money by cutting experienced staff and relying more on syndicated material. The Des Moines Register, part of the Gannett chain, has had several rounds of layoffs in recent years and continued the trend by announcing dozens of job cuts this week.

Brian Duffy, who has been the newspaper's political cartoonist for 25 years, was among those let go.

A brief story in the Register's business section on Thursday noted,

The Register was said to be the only newspaper in the United States with an editorial cartoon on the front page. The tradition extended back to at least the early 20th century, according to Register archives. Ted Rall, the president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists, estimated that about 20 editorial cartoonists have been laid off or retired in the last three years without being replaced.

For several decades in the first half of the 20th century, the Register's front-page cartoonist was Jay "Ding" Darling, who won two Pulitzers and was the founding president of the National Wildlife Federation. From 1953 to 1983, the Register's cartoonist was Frank Miller, who also won a Pulitzer.

Duffy never won a Pulitzer, but he was highly regarded, and I spoke with several politically-engaged Iowans yesterday who were shocked to hear he had been fired.

Meanwhile, the Register's chief political columnist, David Yepsen, interviewed this week for the position of director of Southern Illinois University's Paul Simon Public Policy Institute. Yepsen hasn't gotten a pink slip, but you can't blame him for looking around. Morale in the Register's newsroom must be horrendous.

The Register's stature and quality has never been the same since Gannett bought the paper in the 1980s. Its circulation has dropped significantly as well, especially during the past decade. I don't know if anything can be done to halt the vicious cycle of newspapers cutting budgets for newsgathering and original content, then losing circulation, leading to more cuts. In this tough economy, businesses are reducing spending on advertising too.

Post any thoughts on the decline of once-great newspapers in this thread.

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David Yepsen is again talking about the problems associated with trying to use out-of-state residents as Iowa caucus voters. Taking a look at residency requirements for Iowa this is their position:
http://www.dot.state.ia.us/mvd/ods/newre sidents.htm

"Resident does not include a person who is attending a college or university in this state if the person has a domicile in another state and has a valid driver's license issued by the state of domicile. Resident also does not include members of the armed forces that are stationed in Iowa, providing that their vehicles are properly registered in their state of residency."

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Steve Benen is incorrect about David Yepsen predicting Kerry's surge in the Iowa 2004 caucus. This is what Yepsen predicted the day of the Iowa caucus: He predicted that Dean would win!

Organization will be key to victory (DAVID YEPSEN, 01/19/2004, Des Moines Register)

If organization is as important as caucus lore tells us it is, Howard Dean should win the Iowa caucuses tonight. Driven by youthful energy and anti-war activism not seen since the Vietnam War, Dean has assembled what his organizers claim is the best get-out-the-vote operation ever built in the state.

They are probably correct. As the campaign draws to a close today, the important story isn't the candidates and their hoopla. It's their organizations and their boring grunt work on the streets and telephones of Iowa.

Given that recent polls of the race show the contest has tightened, Dean hopes his operation provides him with the political firewall he needs to protect himself against the late surges by John Kerry and John Edwards. A Dean win in Iowa tonight would be devastating to the early front-runner here, Dick Gephardt.

It was the day of the caucus, and Yepsen still thought Dean was gonna win? LOL, I wish he were right! I was about as hardcore a Deaniac as they came, and thought that Dean would win even as late as the Sunday before the caucuses. But when I saw that we were doomed in the Monday polls for second choice, even I realized our chances were not looking good.

So regarding the status of Edwards, I wouldn't listen to either the "dean" of the Iowa press, or the Obama's camp spin, for that matter:

The objectives of Obama's team are straightforward: to make Iowa (and the rest of the contest) a two-person race between their guy and Hillary. In Plouffe's telling, Edwards is fading fast in Iowa. And a key Obama supporter there, the former state party chairman Gordon Fischer, gave an interview last week disparaging the turnout of Edwards supporters at the big-deal Jefferson-Jackson Dinner on November 10, arguing that Obama was well poised to pick up Edwards's voters, whom he described as "up for grabs."

Methinks they doth protest too much. Indeed, the fact that Plouffe and Fischer are posturing this way suggests that the Obama forces continue to fear the prospect of being trumped by Edwards in Iowa. And with good reason. So far Obama has spent some $5 million on advertising in the state, and Clinton's total is more than $3 million, whereas as of two weeks ago, Edwards had spent just $20,000. And yet the race remains a statistical three-way dead heat.

More to the point, because of the bizarro nature of the caucuses--the participants must go out, on a frigid night, for a multi-hour ordeal of public declarations of support and multiple rounds of voting--the contest in Iowa is a slog-it-out ground war, in which organization and get-out-the-vote efforts are paramount. And here all sides concede privately that Edwards's team, which has been in place essentially for five years, is the class of the field. When I ask Edwards if he's concerned about signs of slippage in Iowa, he literally laughs in my face. "We have 99 county chairs and about 75 percent of the precincts covered with precinct chairs," he says. "I know how to run a caucus campaign in Iowa--and so do the people who work for me."

Not that I am going to believe straight-up what Edwards says about his status in Iowa either; but when you look at the internals of the two latest polls, and they both show Edwards either leading or within a percentage point of the lead among those whom actually have caucused, the claim seems rather weak.

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Steve Benen has a good catch, from a Fox News interview with David Yepsen of the DesMoines Register. Not only does Yepsen think Edwards could collapse in Iowa, but he thinks Richardson could surge into third place.

John Edwards has not been doing well lately, he's slipping a little in these numbers. That's not a good trend line for him. He's got to get this thing over with fast."

Yepsen said he fears Edwards could fall so far that New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, currently running fourth, could slip into third place -- and would therefore be most thankful for that.

"I think one of the things that could happen is that Edwards could collapse, sag, fall apart, not do well," Yepsen said. "And that leaves Richardson in real striking distance of third place. Richardson has run a good campaign. He's got some support here. If I were Edwards I'd be worried about sagging so far it could enable Richardson to take third place."

Now, Benen notes that Yepsen actually foresaw Kerry's rise four years ago, so perhaps we should heed his warnings, but is it well founded on the ground observation or mere poll stenography?

The most recent poll out of Iowa, from ABC News/WaPo, has Obama rising a few points since July to 30%, Clinton holding steady at 26% and Edwards dropping 4 points to 22%. So what are Yepsen's observations out of Iowa?

John Edwards has not been doing well lately, he's slipping a little in these numbers.

And...

Yepsen doesn't see Clinton falling here. "I see Clinton as flat."

And now look at what Yepsen says about the dynamic between Obama and Clinton.

"I think experience is important, but I think caucus goers are weighing the value of experience versus a fresh face and turning the page. And it's, I think, a close call. But right now, fresh face is starting to outweigh experience.

Sound familiar? From the ABC News/WaPo poll analysis:

Most Democratic likely voters in Iowa, 55 percent, say they're more interested in a "new direction and new ideas" than in strength and experience, compared with 49 percent in July -- a help to Obama, who holds a substantial lead among "new direction" voters.

What is it about this poll that it seems to inform many of Yepsen's observations about the Democratic race in Iowa? Certainly the ABC/WaPo poll from July looks like an outlier that inflated Obama's support, so why wouldn't this one be the same? And as for Yepsen's claim that Edwards is falling, a Rasmussen poll taken on Nov. 12 gave Edwards his highest % in months. And if you look at the recent CBS News/NYT poll, the internals sure seem to favor Edwards.

I have to say, there's been an inordinate amount of coverage of the ABC News/WaPo poll, as journalists seek out the latest tale to tell (this one being Obama rising above Clinton in Iowa.) Since David Yepsen has a reputation for being such an Iowa oracle, it's odd to see him falling right in line, so I have to wonder is he just promoting the latest most interesting narrative to emerge out of Iowa, even if it is based on one poll, or is there something on the ground informing his observations. If it's the latter, we should see some hardening of Richardson's numbers in subsequent polls, as his overtaking Edwards is one prediction of Yepsen's not borne out in the ABC/WaPo poll...yet.

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Some of the first steps being taken by Democratic presidential campaigns have gotten great publicity; others have lagged in the background.  I've been reading Iowa newspapers and blogs pretty steadily to see how things are going.  Here's my take (largely "their" take on the campaigns to date:

Hillary Clinton has certainly gotten heavy coverage from the Des Moines Register (as has Tom Vilsack).  She does not show up as favorably in local blog coverage from people like Drew Miller and John Deeth.  In its way, this is pretty similar to Hillary's national profile.  Hillary in Iowa, however, is doing different things than the "national Hillary."

The big difference for Hillary is her reliance and recruitment of well known Iowa women politicians and activists.  Nationally, I just get the feeling that Hillary is tapping more deeply into abroader audience composed of Bill's inner circle, prominent money raisers, and the "moderate" side of Democrats.  

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