IOWA — With less than three weeks until the Iowa caucuses, the country is beginning to lock its political gaze on the state that every four years holds what amounts to the first official vetting of presidential candidates—the state that has launched, cemented, or dashed the fortunes of so many seeking the nation’s highest office.
It’s easy to see why voters who haven’t yet paid much attention will have to play catch-up this time around: the political terrain has shifted countless times, with the front-runners becoming the forgottens, the bottom-of-the-pack surging to take the lead, the polls continuously anointing new anointed ones.

But regardless of scandal or spin, one piece of the election terrain is sure to go unchanged between now and January 3: the vast expanse of Iowa where this wintery political showdown will take place, as it has every year since 1972. To that end, news organizations are—correctly—now attempting to paint for their readers and viewers a clear picture of this section of Middle America that holds such political sway.

This process operates differently that it once did. Just eight years ago, my old newspaper, the Chicago Tribune, set up hotel-based, three- to five-person bureaus in Des Moines and Nashua, N.H., more than a month in advance of those states’ votes. Today, with presidential campaigns changing and becoming more nationally focused, most news organizations simply do not have the budgets or the desire to “embed” their reporters at the height of political season.

The result is reporters who are rarely experts on the terrain on which they tread. Worse still, many don’t recognize it. Where reporters once got to know the terrain of a state and its voters personally, by crisscrossing the better part of it and talking to hundreds of people along the way, most of them now fly in for big debates, critical campaign appearances, or when they absolutely need to catch up with a candidate who is either on the rise or fall. They rarely spend enough time on the ground to gravitate toward telling nuanced stories about how voters are feeling and why. They can rarely, with any real certainty or conviction, truly capture the zeitgeist of the place behind their dateline.

Against this backdrop, journalism from within these states, written by people who are ostensibly experts, may have greater force. Unfortunately, The Atlantic last week released a story that, in its depiction of Iowa, is more laughable caricature or confusing Picasso abstract than realistic still life.

Stephen G. Bloom, a University of Iowa professor and 20-year Iowa resident, attempts in the magazine’s online edition to profile the place, its people, and the circumstances shaping its voters this political cycle, and in the process to argue that the state’s unique status in selecting future presidents is unjustified.

I disagree with that conclusion, and I wish that an Atlantic editor had pushed Bloom harder to explain why the nation shouldn’t be influenced—even inspired—by a state where generations of voters have cared so much about presidential elections that they are willing to participate in the caucuses, a system that requires them to debate their views and then cast their votes and stand on their principles in public. But the bigger journalistic problem here is that the argument is buttressed by a story about meth addicts, hunting dogs, and tractor pulls that has very little to say about the real issues that will be motivating Iowans to caucus for their candidates—and one whose errors and omissions reinforce its stereotypical portrayal of the state and its people.

Kirsten Scharnberg Hampton is an Iowa native who for a decade was a national and foreign correspendent for the Chicago Tribune, where she covered the war in Iraq, famine in Africa, and breaking news and politics in the U.S. She also worked at the Baltimore Sun and The Des Moines Register, and recently moved back to the Midwest after several years in Europe. She can be reached at kirstenrhampton@aol.com.