News Leadership 3.0

August 16, 2010

Goodbye horse race: A formula for citizen-focused campaign coverage

As news organizations struggle for relevance and engagement, Jay Rosen’s “The Citizens Agenda in Campaign Coverage” revives a way for journalists to produce stories that mean something to voters.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. No kidding. If the latest dispatches from the campaign trail are any indication, we could be back in the 90s (or 80s or ...).

The horse race - who’s up today, what’s the marketing strategy, who has the most money to spend, and the fact-challenged barbs and counter-barbs - dominates much of what passes for elections coverage even in the pre-Labor Day going. It is, as Jay Rosen once said, as if news media believe citizens want above all to be spectators at their own bamboozlement. (Disclaimer: I report this comment from memory of over 15 years ago, and I want to attribute the idea. but it’s definitely “Jay said something like this.”)

This week, Rosen brought back a radical departure for campaign coverage that a few news organizations, notably The Charlotte Observer under editor Rich Oppel, tried in the 1990s. “The Citizens Agenda in Campaign Coverage” is not all that complicated.

The basic idea is for journalists to ask citizens what issue they want the candidates to address during the campaign, create an advisory group to help you hone the list, publish it, and use it to guide your coverage - including questions you ask candidates to address. Read Jay’s 10-step list here, and then come back, because I have a few additional suggestions.

In the 90s, few newspapers tried to create citizens’ agenda. Rosen says he thinks political journalists just didn’t want to do it. That’s part of it - the lure of conflict and the comfort of familiar practice (not to mention some journalist arrogance) run strong. I also recall that the old guard of the newspaper industry freaked out at any assertion that citizens might be better equipped to create an agenda than editors were. But those days and that old guard are gone. Now, the Web offers opportunities to deploy Rosen’s plan even more effectively.

We attempted a version of this plan at The Oregonian during the 1996 presidential campaign, when I was politics editor. Based on that long-ago experience, I have some suggestions to add to Jay’s excellent list:

- Set benchmarks for how much of your coverage will be devoted to issues on your citizens’ agenda. Make it more than half. Heck, try 75 percent. When we tried this back in the 90s, we had two open pages a day for campaign coverage (those were the days, right?). At least one full page had to be issues coverage. If we produced less, we reduced the amount of space overall for politics that day. What happened: This forced is to plan and devote reporter talent to issues coverage first and build the rest around it. On the Web, space may be less of a determinant, but you can use story counts.

- Write only briefs about daily doings, including the horse race and campaign strategy. Develop a series of questions to ask when considering expanding one of these stories. The key question: Does a closer look contribute to the citizens’ agenda or better understanding important issues and the qualifications of the candidate? If not, keep it brief.

- Assign a reporter to analyze campaign ads and statements and create a graphic that keeps content tight and forces the reporter to fact-check the advertising. Do the research and take a stand about what’s accurate and what’s not accurate, rather than relying on the opposition to shoot it down.

Sound like good political journalism? Let’s hope some of you give it a try. (And please let me know if you do.)

By Michele McLellan, 08/16/10 at 6:57 am
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Tags: knight foundation, journalism, politics, jay rosen, campaign coverage