Lucky You
…Randy Evans joins the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative
Back in the day, The Des Moines Register newsroom was a city-block-long, open room dotted with earnest reporters. Even though smoking had been banned from the building years before, the black burn marks on the linoleum floor from those days remained.
Several folks kept the place a solid, well-respected, state-wide newspaper.
I was in the Features department, so I didn’t have much to do with the news side other than socially. I had terrific copy editors (thankfully), and the leader of the department, Pat Denato, was a supportive gem.
But there was this guy across the room named Randy Evans, who commanded the gaggle of reporters not only in Des Moines but ‘wrangled the folks’ in the bureaus around the state. Waterloo, Cedar Rapids, Dubuque, Davenport, Sioux City, Ames, and Iowa City.
In addition to those full-time reporters, The Register had a web of around 100 ‘stringers’ who served as the ‘eyes and ears’ of anything going on that was newsworthy.
“Some (of the stringers) were local newspaper, radio, and TV journalists who alerted us to the news in their areas (such as the United Airlines jet in trouble over northwest Iowa,” said Evans. He continued:
“There was a retired accountant who alerted us to a shooting in Mount Pleasant that turned out to be the killing of the mayor and wounding of two city council members by a disgruntled resident during a council meeting.”
The Newspaper Iowa Depends Upon — our alma mater's motto and practice.
”The Register in those days was full of top talent,” said Garson. “But producing a newspaper is sort of like piling a bunch of different food into a meat grinder and hoping that what comes out the other end is tasty. All of the day's news stories run through the city desk, and the finished product needs to be stories people need and want to read. The input has to be managed—planned and well-edited—to get the needed output...
“Randy Evans had the most important job in the newsroom, and he did it as well as it ever was done. He worked his magic daily, even when things fell apart in the middle of the day, as they often did.”
Market forces change. Advertisers in the metro area did not want to pay to reach readers miles away. Advertisers explored other novel, less expensive ways to reach customers when digital news became ubiquitous. Craigslist (free ad postings) began making Classified advertising obsolete, and so forth. Realtor.com became the source of a motherlode of advertising revenue as home buyers and sellers turned to the immediacy of the internet.
As so often is the case in the lifecycle of successful but aging organizations, the mindset was ‘we’ve always done things this way,’ which made innovation and taking forward-looking risks in the digital age seemingly unnecessary. I remember marching into the publisher’s office in 1992 after logging into CompuServe, AOL, and Prodigy, proselytizing that we could maintain our state-wide presence without relying on trucking papers all over the state. He scoffed. He’d heard about doomsayers proclaiming the end of the newspaper business when some new form of news and information was invented—radio, TV news, then cable TV news.
He had no clue what would happen in a mere decade from that moment, and not many in his position did. That was then; this is now.
Having Randy Evans on board the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative as of yesterday makes me think about those days.
In a perfect world, the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative is evolving into a connective tissue for the state of Iowa again. We now have three columnists in the Quad Cities, one in the Cedar Valley area of Waterloo, and more than 40 others scattered about the metro area and around the state. This vision is becoming a reality, day by day, and I want to thank you, the reader, for telling your friends, neighbors, and colleagues about us because you are why we are growing.
Randy Evans is one more reason to tell your friends to subscribe. He is an Iowa journalism treasure who started his career with The Register in September 1974 and retired in December 2014.
The next year, he became executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council, following in the footsteps of Herb Strentz and Kathleen Richardson.
In his career at the Register, he covered courts, moved to the Davenport bureau for four years, and returned to Des Moines in 1980. He spent a couple of years covering state government. Then he moved into editing roles—including state editor, metro editor, assistant managing editor, news editor, and, in his last posting, opinion editor.
Here’s a link to a Monday Zoom Potluck conversation, mostly about his current role as executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council.
Many who cycled through The Register on their way to careers with Newsweek, The New York Times, the Detroit Free Press, and the Los Angeles Times think back to their days in that newsroom with unusual fondness, and Randy Evans is one reason why.
One such youngster at the time is Phoebe Wall Howard, now an automotive reporter for The Detroit Free Press (and regular speaker during the Okoboji Writers’ Retreat). In an email, she wrote:
“Randy Evans is an editor who creates great journalists quietly, with humor and grace when no one notices. He helped me, as a baby reporter, find unique angles and fresh approaches to news, features, and political stories that captivated readers. He spotlights details that resonate for years. It might reference the size of a bat (comparable to an Oreo cookie) or strategies practiced by the Miss America Pageant contestants (Vaseline on the teeth to enhance ease of smiling). He teaches how to find humanity, a Hallmark of mine that has carried me to national awards and loyal readers nationwide for three decades. If there’s a seatbelt law, find the family that inspired it. If lawmakers step up oversight of VA hospitals, find the military heroes who suffered to make change.
“Every big story has a tiny detail. Randy Evans inspires a passion for writing and storytelling.”
“The two best news bosses I’ve known of in my long run in Iowa journalism have been Michael Gartner and Randy Evans, and I feel lucky as hell that I got to work for both,” said Chuck Offenburger. “Evans had the perfect background – being a native of a small Iowa town, Bloomfield, then a graduate of the University of Iowa journalism program and a star on the Daily Iowan newspaper there, spending some time on the newspapers in Bloomfield, Albia, then Davenport and Des Moines. He knows the territory, and he knows the news…
“In 1998, when I resigned from the Register,” added Offenburger, “the publisher, Barbara Henry, asked me why I was leaving. I listed a couple of smaller reasons for her and then said, ‘You’ve got the wrong person as the editor of the Register.’
“Who should be the editor?” she asked. “My answer was quick, easy, and honest: ‘Randy Evans.”
Garson added: “Evans's presence as a contributor to the Iowa Writers' Collaborative provides a voice that enriches the Collaborative for all of us.”
Why now?
Like many of us in the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative, Evans, 73, is at that point of the lifeline when most people our age range play golf, mahjong, bridge, or couch-surfing. He has more than full-time responsibility as the executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council. So, why take on one more chore, like launching a Substack column with our group?
When asked the question via email, Evans responded:
The Collaborative has become an important group of knowledgeable, passionate voices on diverse topics in just a few years. I’ve been reading their columns from Day One.
I never claimed to have cornered the market on the best ideas, so I am grateful to have easy access to the ideas these writers share with their readers.
Ultimately, I realized the Collaborative was an excellent way to connect with serious readers in the Midwest.
So, here I am.
We are proud to have Randy Evans join us. And, for the first time, his name appears in the roster below:
The Iowa Writers’ Collaborative Roster
Nicole Baart: This Stays Here, Sioux Center
Ray Young Bear: From Red Earth Drive, Meskwaki Settlement
Laura Belin: Iowa Politics with Laura Belin, Windsor Heights
Tory Brecht: Brecht’s Beat, Quad Cities
Dartanyan L. Brown: My Integrated Live, Des Moines
Jane Burns, The Crossover, Des Moines
Dave Busiek, Dave Busiek on Media, Des Moines
Iowa Writers Collaborative, Roundup
Steph C: It Was Never a Dress, Johnston
Art Cullen, Art Cullen’s Notebook, Storm Lake
Suzanna de Baca, Dispatches from the Heartland, Huxley
Debra Engle: A Whole New World, Madison County
: Stray Thoughts, Des Moines via Bloomfield
Daniel P. Finney: Paragraph Stacker, Des Moines
Arnold Garson: Second Thoughts, Okoboji and Sioux Falls
Julie Gammack: Julie Gammack’s Iowa Potluck, Des Moines and Okoboji
Fern Kupfer and Joe Geha: Fern and Joe, Ames
Jody Gifford: Benign Inspiration, West Des Moines
Rob Gray's Area: Rob Gray’s Area, Ankeny
Become Inspired...Nik Heftman, Iowa
Beth Hoffman: In the Dirt, Lovilla
Iowa Capital Dispatch, an alliance with IWC
Black Iowa News: Dana James, Iowa
Chris Jones: Chris’s Substack, Iowa City
Pat Kinney: View from Cedar Valley, Waterloo
Robert Leonard: Deep Midwest: Politics and Culture, Bussey
Letters From Iowans, Iowa
Darcy Maulsby: Keepin’ It Rural, Calhoun County
Hola Iowa: Iowa
Alison McGaughey: The Inquisitive Quad Citizen, Quad Cities
Kurtis Meyer: Showing Up, St. Ansgar
Vicki Minor: Relatively Minor, Winterset
Wini Moranville: Wini’s Food Stories, Des Moines
Jeff Morrison: Between Two Rivers, Cedar Rapids
Kyle Munson: Kyle Munson’s Main Street, Des Moines
Jane Nguyen: The Asian Iowan, West Des Moines
John Naughton: My Life in Color, Des Moines
Chuck Offenburger: Iowa Boy Chuck Offenburger, Jefferson and Des Moines
Barry Piatt: Piatt on Politics Behind the Curtain, Washington, D.C.
Dave Price: Dave Price’s Perspective, Des Moines
Ice Cube Press: The Pulse of A Heartland Publisher, North Liberty
Macey Shofroth: The Midwest Creative, Norwalk
Larry Stone: Listening to the Land, Elkader
Mary Swander: Mary Swander’s Buggy Land, Kalona
Mary Swander's Emerging Voices: Emerging Voices, Kalona
Cheryl Tevis: Unfinished Business, Boone County
Ed Tibbetts: Along the Mississippi, Davenport
Jason Walsmith: The Racontourist, Earlham
Kali White VanBaale: 988: Mental Healthcare in Iowa, Bondurant
Teresa Zilk: Talking Good, Des Moines
Speaking of Chuck Offenburger, Arnold Garson, Chuck Offenburger, and Phoebe Wall Howard… all have been speakers during the Okoboji Writers’ Retreat. Randy will be with us this fall, too. Tell any journalist you know they will want to attend the Master Reporting panel with some of these stars, including Randy Evans.
Enroll:
Welcome to Randy. His columns are clear as a bell. He explains complicated issues in an understandable way. He has a dry, newsroom wit. Glad he’s joined the Collaborative.
Randy Evans was my boss and mentor for the 11 years I was the Cedar Rapids Bureau Chief for The Register. Evans was so many people wrapped up in one package: An encyclopedia of places and people of Iowa; a straight man delivering deadpan punch lines with a twitch of his abundant mustache; a solid wall to bounce ideas off of; and a consummate professional when it came to both hard news and feature stories. We're so lucky he's willing to share his Stray Thoughts with us.