Des Moines' Washburn can write her own ticket

The top editor at The Des Moines Register, Carolyn Washburn, took plenty of hits over how she moderated the presidential debates sponsored by her paper last month. But the Register's polling, showing Republican Mike Huckabee's 11th-hour surge, proved to be spot-on -- and Corporate has now taken notice in a big way.

I just noticed a link (detail, left) at the top of Gannett's corporate home page, to the Register's "ground-breaking coverage of the Iowa Caucuses." Believe you me, in the hyper corporate politics of Gannett, where insiders obsess like Kremlinologists over any signs of power shifts, this mention reads like someone's star is ascending. (I was impressed by the Register 's caucus videos, too.)

Full disclosure: Washburn was managing editor at The Idaho Statesman, then owned by Gannett, when I was an editor and reporter there in the mid-1990s.