Iowa Influential: Wired gives props to fellow Center for Independent Media site Iowa Independent in a piece about how “local blogs have now risen to play a pivotal role in the squeaky-close 2008 primary season.” Fresh off a mention of Iowa Indy’s political “power rankings” on Hannity & Colms, the piece quotes Des Moines Register vet Chuck Offenburger, who says Iowa’s bloggers “challenge the public’s thinking.” He says, “Many times I notice, like with the Iowa Independent or smaller papers, they’ll be out in front of the media on some campaign appearance, and then the larger media then works their way around to it.”

A pat on the Black: A-list Washington Post blogger Chris Cillizza published all 33 nominations for his  best state reporters post and included one from Minnesota, Eric Black, a Center for Independent Media fellow and MinMon writer from May through December. Loose lips… At a media panel at Metro State early this month, I mentioned to a co-panelist that the Center for Independent Media will soon be launching a Washington, D.C. site. Before I could write a word on The Washington Independent, he — the capable David Brauer of MinnPost — chatted up CIM’s CEO David Bennehum on the new venture and wrote a good piece on the bureau. A dozen editors and reporters with experience writing for TalkingPointsMemo, the Washington Post and others will cover national news with an eye toward Minnesota and other states where CIM has sites; we’ll run their stories from time to time, and they’ll take the best of Minnesota Monitor for D.C. audiences. “CIM’s move is more than lighting a candle in the darkness; it’s the necessary future arriving,” Brauer wrote. “The for-profit locals have decided D.C. doesn’t pay, but the need for locally relevant national coverage hasn’t diminished.” I’ll write more on the site, now in press-release mode, in the coming days.

Morley and the Lone Gunman theory: In the current issue of Playboy, CIM national editorial director Jefferson Morley digs into the “new JFK assassination files” finding that “a handful of top CIA officials had far greater knowledge of [Lee Harvey] Oswald in the weeks before Kennedy was killed than they ever let on, and at least one of these operatives remained quiet about what he knew to perhaps a criminal extent” and that “the scientific evidence supporting the lone gunman theory has weakened.”