Anyone sitting in a newsroom right now is about to slip into a jealous rage. Why? The Center for Independent Media is growing! And — big news here — today I get to welcome our newest reporter, Jonathan E. Kaplan. Kaplan will be working the Congress beat for our network of sites in battleground states around the country, letting readers in Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Colorado and New Mexico know what their federal delegations are up to. When the news he breaks has national appeal, we’ll run it here.

Kaplan comes to us after serving as the Portland Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram’s Washington correspondent. Before that, Kaplan spent five years writing for The Hill. Check out his first post on The Independent Streak.