During the slow news week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, I often reflect on my work and plan changes for the year to come. At this time in 2018, I was preparing to abandon the handle “desmoinesdem” in favor of a standard byline. Although I had valid reasons for choosing that pseudonym in the 2000s, I decided later that publishing under my real name had other advantages and was more transparent.

Over the past several days I’ve been implementing a change to this site’s tagging system, incorporating best journalism practices that should also make the site more user-friendly.

The tags at the bottom of Bleeding Heartland posts have been designed to make it easy for readers to find published work on the site about various people (Kim Reynolds, Chuck Grassley, Joe Biden), institutions (Congress, the state legislature, Iowa State University), or topics (2022 elections, education, water quality, or the Iowa caucuses). That’s valuable, and I will keep all such tags going forward.

In addition, every post will now have at least one tag indicating the kind of writing the author has employed. The most common tags will be news, analysis, commentary, and advocacy.

The news tag is for any piece containing noteworthy information about recent events. Scoops that appeared first at Bleeding Heartland, or stories only covered on this website, will have an additional tag as well: exclusive. Any piece labeled exclusive involved serious digging: public records requests, connecting the dots in a new way, or other kinds of investigation, like Marty Ryan’s reporting on the Iowa Board of Corrections in 2019 or John Morrissey’s recent article about poor-performing headlights on vehicles used by the Iowa State Patrol.

Analytical writing was at the center of my “past life” covering Russian politics and has long been a priority for me on this website. Posts tagged analysis go beyond reporting some event, like a candidate announcement, court ruling, or election result, to putting that news in context. Many Bleeding Heartland posts now labeled analysis might also be called “conceptual scoops.”

The commentary tag is for posts expressing opinions about any topic or political figure. I’ve been liberal in applying this tag not only to pieces that one might find on a newspaper’s op-ed page, but also to some posts that mostly consist of news reporting.

Advocacy goes beyond stating the author’s views about a subject to encouraging readers to take some action: support a particular candidate; contact state legislators, the governor, or members of Congress; attend an event for like-minded people; or get involved in a cause.

Posts combining more than one element will have multiple tags. For instance, my Iowa House and Senate campaign previews are all tagged both news and analysis. Posts that largely cover recent events but include some evaluation of a policy or political figure are tagged both news and commentary. Posts encouraging readers to support a given candidate in a Democratic caucus or primary are tagged both commentary and advocacy.

While re-tagging about 2,000 previously published posts (going back several years) to conform to the new system, I’ve introduced a few other new tags as well. Some are self-explanatory (book review, media criticism). The interview tag is not for every piece that quotes someone I’ve interviewed, but is reserved for posts that draw primarily from interviews (for instance, Ann Selzer discussing her polling methods or women describing the circumstances that led to their abortions).

I welcome reader feedback on how tagging or any other Bleeding Heartland feature can be improved.