How to contact me: beth.dalbey@patch.com
Beth Dalbey, a longtime award-winning community journalist, is Patch’s national editor. She has been with Patch since 2011 when she launched sites in Iowa and provided national Iowa Caucus and swing-state general election coverage. She worked as a regional manager before moving to the national desk in 2017. Throughout her time at Patch, she has reported and written about local topics of national interest and is currently focusing on exclusive Patch content, including Block Talk, an only-on-Patch neighborhood etiquette column for which readers supply advice.
Dalbey and the newspapers she has edited have earned numerous awards for news, feature and government coverage, editorial and column writing, and overall general excellence from the Iowa Newspaper Association, the National Newspaper Association and the Associated Press Media Editors. In 1992 in Iowa, she led the weekly Dallas County News to win the INA's prestigious Newspaper of the Year award, competing against metro newspapers many times its size. She was the youngest recipient ever of the INA’s Distinguished Service Award in 1994. At Patch, she received the Todd Richissin Award for Excellence in Reporting and Writing for the “Menace of Bullies” project.
In Iowa, Dalbey’s byline has also appeared in the Fairfield Daily Ledger, where she was editor for five years; and in the Des Moines Business Record, Cityview, dsm magazine and other publications under the umbrella of Business Publications Corp., where she was the editorial director for several years. Dalbey also freelanced for the Des Moines Register and other print and digital publications
Dalbey grew up in Missouri and majored in journalism at Northwest Missouri State University. Except for a three-year stint as communications editor for a scientific institute doing ape language research, she has spent her entire career in community journalism. At the former Great Ape Trust of Iowa, she wrote about the world-famous resident bonobos Kanzi and Panbanisha.
Cops remain baffled over the whereabouts of a tiger seen strolling in a Houston neighborhood; “Tiger King” star Carol Baskin offers reward.
Friendship blooms between Chiefs fan and cardboard cutout guy; sisterhood of the “Traveling Diary”; gorilla, human moms bond; guilty pooch?
Colonial is restarting operations, but it could be days before the pipeline supplying 45 percent of East Coast fuel is at full capacity.
The “#MeToo” movement brought sweeping changes to statehouses on how allegations of sexual misconduct against lawmakers are investigated.
Someone has used duct tape at least three times to close the mouths, shut the eyes and bind the legs of alligators, and no one knows why.
The gorilla Kiki, a five-time mom, seemed to fall “in love” with Emmalina Austin’s baby when they visited the Franklin Park Zoo in Boston.
If your kids are done dressing up Barbie dolls and racing Matchbook cars and trucks, print a label and send the toys back to Mattel.
Puppy mills supplied increased demand for puppies — and that put some dogs at greater risk in at least 16 states, the Humane Society says.
A zebra “angry” that police used stun guns is back in custody after galloping from the Triple W Livestock Auction in Cookeville, Tennessee.
Patch readers have been sharing the best advice they ever received from their moms for Mother’s Day 2021. Now, an editor takes her turn.
These moms use their love to push through life's many challenges, giving ongoing support to their children and other people's children.
Patch readers, many of them moms themselves, are dishing out their moms’ best advice in our extended Mother’s Day 2021 celebration.
One Michigander’s manure-made “fuss fence” is another’s compost fence, but there’s really only one way to smell it: with pinched nostrils.
Patch readers are recalling the best advice their mothers ever gave them in our extended celebration of Mother’s Day 2021.
Forced to entertain us in circuses, these sentient creatures discover at an expansive Florida sanctuary what it’s like to be an elephant.
The 17-year periodical cicadas have just one job in their short and very noisy above-ground lives: to continue the species.
Patch readers are recalling the best advice their mothers ever gave them in our extended celebration of Mother’s Day 2021.
A principal at a school where corporal punishment isn’t legal is on administrative leave and could face criminal charges, attorney confirms.
Patch readers are recalling the best advice their mothers ever gave them in our extended celebration of Mother’s Day 2021.
No one knows exactly when or where the heavy-lift booster that launched the core module of China’s space station might fall.
