My Top 5 Favorite Stories of Iowa City Patch's First Year

This site has had more than 2,000 posts on it in the last year, which is a lot to try to remember. This said, I dug deep into the Iowa City Patch archive, and here are a few of my favorite stories that come to mind when I think of what has been posted .

To make it even more challenging, I tried to limit the number to five different stories five.

OK, so I cheated, it's not technically a top five stories list. More like five different story categories.

1. Covering Politics: My site started on June 6 of last year, and from then until really about the beginning of February 2012, the main drive of this site and all of the other Patch sites in Iowa was covering the Iowa Caucus.

In the course of the Republican Caucus I got to cover I believe every Republican candidate for president at least once, sans I believe Herman Cain, who I had already covered before for another publication. Not to mention that I got to cover President Obama twice.

In other words, we're pretty spoiled in Iowa.

Trying to pick stories I like the most out of that bunch is difficult. One that comes to mind that I enjoyed working on a lot was an analysis of the Iowa Tea Party's . The story is probably a bit too long, I admit, but I learned through working on it how complex the Tea Party's structure (or lack thereof) in Iowa really was, and I finished the story with a whole new perspective than when I started on the subject, which I always appreciate.

As for my event coverage, I think I'll go as my favorite. Nothing really happened worth mentioning at this Romney stop, but the impression of the Romney campaign machine was that of something so much more polished and well funded than his competitors that I had been covering up to that point-- it was hard not to notice that this was another level of organization. It gave an impression of an inevitable victory, which turned out to be true.

2. Ni Hao, Iowa City!: This one came from University of Iowa graduate student Guannan Huang. In this bit more about the growing, and many times self-contained, Chinese student community at the University of Iowa. I felt echoes of that (mostly positive) story when I later reported on the sad  involving two Chinese nationals that had met using a Chinese website while both were living in Iowa City.

3. A Wounded Veteran is Triumphant: I really enjoyed this B.A. Morelli story on a wounded Iowa City Marine after stepping on an improvised explosive device. Yet somehow, despite that tragedy, this story has a victorious feel to it. It was probably for just this reason that it was featured on the Huffington Post.

4. Interviews and In Depth Coverage: You may have noticed this already, but I have a weakness for writing long if nobody steps in and stops me.

This is especially helpful on complicated issues such as Iowa City School Board coverage, which sometimes just cannot be fully explained without writing long, and even then you feel like you may have missed on some important detail. Here is a story I wrote on the Iowa City School District deciding to hire more teachers this past year that got some positive responses. 

I also got to indulge myself again with multi-part Q&A format interview stories with and .

Of course, as a reporter I just love interviewing interesting people even if the interviews can't go long. Here are interviews , an Iowa City , and .

5. My Sentimental Favorite: I did a story, photos and video last summer of City High students decorating Pheasant Hill park plinths using as inspiration the artwork of Lemme and Hoover Elementary School students. I don't know what it is about this story, but every time I think about it, or glance through the gallery, it makes me smile.

Also, speaking of great elementary artwork, if you haven't  made by Lemme and Lincoln students you totally should.