February 5, 2012

Iowa Professor Gets Blasted After a Hit on Heartland

A Professor From the Big City Scrutinizes His Iowa Home 2

Fabrizio Costantini for The Chronicle

Stephen Bloom, who angered many in Iowa with his characterizations of the state and its people, is a visiting professor this year at the U. of Michigan at Ann Arbor. "I will be back," he says. "I know Iowa really well. It is my laboratory."

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close A Professor From the Big City Scrutinizes His Iowa Home 2

Fabrizio Costantini for The Chronicle

Stephen Bloom, who angered many in Iowa with his characterizations of the state and its people, is a visiting professor this year at the U. of Michigan at Ann Arbor. "I will be back," he says. "I know Iowa really well. It is my laboratory."

By Robin Wilson

Ann Arbor, Mich.

The screen saver on Stephen G. Bloom's iPhone displays a typical Iowa scene: a golden cornfield in late summer, flanked by a grain silo with a rainbow overhead.

"I happen to like Iowa," says Mr. Bloom, a professor of journalism at the University of Iowa, as he shows off the photo.

But the landscape, located about 20 miles north of his home, in Iowa City, is nothing like the unflattering portrait he painted of Iowa in a controversial piece he wrote for The Atlantic in