The Iowa Center for Public Affairs Journalism is an independent, nonprofit and nonpartisan news service founded by Stephen J. Berry, a Pulitzer-prize winning investigative journalist and an associate professor of journalism at The University of Iowa, and Robert Gutsche Jr., a University of Iowa Ph.D. student and journalist who helped launch the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2009. The Iowa Center’s first full-time executive director-editor is Lyle Muller, a veteran Iowa journalist whose position before joining the Center was Editor of The Gazette (Cedar Rapids, IA).

The Center was incorporated as a non-profit in the state of Iowa in February 2010. The IRS granted Iowa Center for Public Affairs Journalism tax-exempt status under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Service Code as a charitable organization in July 2010.