Good reporting and meaningful journalism always have community as their benefactor. I started my career in community newspapers and I’ve brought that approach with me to every market I’ve covered, large and small. Good storytelling, investigative reporting and media-led roundtables with business and community leaders should all serve the purpose of bettering their readership and audience. 

I joined the Business Record as associate editor because the staff and leadership of Business Publication Corp. understands that its audience is a community. I will strive to continue to grow the Business Record’s news and trends coverage, break stories that are vital to our audience, and continue to explore Central Iowa’s diverse business climate. 

I was born and raised on the east side of Des Moines, graduating from East High School in 2003.

Most recently, I spent four-and-a-half years as an associate editor at the Jacksonville Daily Record, a business and financial media organization in Jacksonville, Fla., where I covered city and state government, transportation and logistics, consumer energy policy and the Jacksonville Jaguars business operations. 

My reporting in Jacksonville was wide-ranging and included the struggles and wins in a protracted push to revitalize Jacksonville’s historic Downtown; the city’s fiscal response to the COVID-19 pandemic; criminal investigations into the failed privatization of Jacksonville’s public utility that led to federal indictments of its CEO and CFO; the Jaguars owner Shad Khan’s multibillion dollar real estate development ambitions in Jacksonville; city investment and incentives policy into private companies; and solar energy development. 

I began my career in 2011 as a crime and courts reporter for the Newton Daily News and worked to eventually be named editor-in-chief in 2018. I was the organization’s news editor from 2014-2018, running the Prairie City News, Jasper County Tribune and Monroe Legacy. In that role, I worked with community organizations and the major local political parties to sponsor election and candidate forums and served on the Colfax Main Street Board. 

I wrote about the development and community response of the Dakota Access Pipeline; a 32-year-old cold case murder trial; and covered school boards and city councils for those Iowa communities. 

In 2016, the Tribune and Prairie City News were honored with first and second place in general excellence, respectively, in the Iowa Newspaper Association’s annual industry awards. I also received the INA’s Genevieve Mauck Stoufer Outstanding Young Iowa Journalist Award in 2016 and the Harrison Skip Weber Investigative Reporting Award in 2014. 

I’m a 2008 graduate of the University of Iowa school of journalism and mass communication and wrote for the Daily Iowan in 2006-07.

When I’m not on the beat, my wife, Betsy, and I are playing with our dogs, listening to live jazz, enjoying Iowa’s rivers and trails, drinking a local craft beer, at the cinema or watching “Star Wars.”

Please do not hesitate to reach out to me with counsel, story ideas and feedback. We have a talented newsroom at the Business Record that is ready to tell your stories. I can be reached at 515-480-3573 or mikemendenhall@bpcdm.com.