STUMP: media and politics

Politics Reporter Rebels

Richard Nangle, a reporter from the Worcester Telegram & Gazette writes to Jay Rosen:

The more I cover this race the more I am disgusted with what I read in the major dailies. I spotted a Wilgoren story last summer that referred to Birkenstock liberals and tongue-pierced students. At a Dean event in Boston I made a point to include in my story that there were no body piercings or Birkenstocks in sight, despite the media hype. ...

The question I keep asking myself is how do I file a dignified report and not get beaten by the competition at the same time? And how do I present my work to a major newspaper that clearly is into the "gotcha" and horserace aspects of the campaign, which I tend to ignore? As I head back up to New Hampshire on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday I'll be looking for a way to emphasize substance. Then I will read inside baseball stories in the major papers and wonder again whether I'm fighting a losing battle that suggests it's time for me to find out if I can make any money playing golf.

These are good questions, and Nangle's not alone in decrying the horse race. But I don't know if ignoring it is the answer. As Neil Brown told us in November, the horse race does generate interest. Miss out on the political mechanics of the campaign season, and your stories will probably get trampled in the glut of exciting, politics-as-sports pieces that do cover that aspect.

At the same time, local reporters can't and shouldn't compete with the national media to get ahead of the polls and find the next angle in the horse race. But they are better equipped than national reporters to take those horse race stories and tie them into their readers' lives.

The national press goes through polls like tissues, always calling for the freshest numbers, trying to determine who's got "Joe-mentum," who's rising, who's falling, who's gonna win, who's gonna lose. Local reporters have more freedom to look hard at those numbers, to search for who or what they represent, and who or what they exclude.

As the race turns national, I hope more local reporters seize the opportunity.

Give This Headline Writer a Pat on the Back

Way to use digits, Tucson Citizen.

This is the headline on their article about the soaring deficit projections from the Congressional Budget Office: "Now We'll Owe $2,400,000,000,000."

I've been on the lookout for a story that goes beyond the call of duty to hit this story home. This article is perfectly solid, but the Tucson Citizen's headline is what sells it.

My only criticism is that the CBO's budget predictions are just that. They're by no means certain. So the headline would have been a bit more accurate if the Citizen had said, "Now We May Owe $2,400,000,000,000."

Still, seeing "$2.4 trillion" just kind of boggles the mind and fails to register. Seeing 11 zeros is a bit of a jolt. In a good way.

For a Limited Time

Congressional Quarterly (owned by The Poynter Institute for Media Studies, which publishes this weblog) is making its 64-page guide to the federal budget deficit available free as a PDF online, for a limited time.

Some of the contents of the guide, as advertised by CQ:

• "An analysis of how, after a brief period of budget surpluses, the federal government once again finds itself in debt-and the difficulty in finding remedies to erase the red ink.
• "A historical look at the price politicians-including George Bush Sr., Bill Clinton and Bob Dole-have paid by trying to reduce the federal deficit.
• "An examination of why corporate America, a potent force for 'fiscal responsibility' in the 1980s and 1990s, is staying quiet about today's deficit.
• "An explanation of whether-and why-deficits matter, and how surpluses bring their own kind of economic peril.
• "The debate within the Republican party as to how best to handle the deficit."

With the CBO's projected budget deficit splashed across today's front pages, it's a good time to start paying attention to this story. The state of the federal budget could be a big matter this election cycle, and definitely will be down the road.

Getting to the Point

Liberal blogger Kevin Drum is trying to figure out how casual blog posts may get information across better than traditional news writing. Unfortunately, he's having some trouble getting the idea across:

There's something about the standard style of news reporting that seems almost designed to confuse otherwise straightforward stories, and it's independent of inverted pyramids or specific editorial policies or anything like that. But I haven't quite put my finger on it yet....

Whether we can inject some life into our political stories by sucking some of the formalisms out is a worthy question, I think. And Drum asks it well. Twice.

Blogging Iowa

The Daily Kos, a liberal weblog that's been receiving a lot of press attention recently, announced today that the site will have two people in Iowa, blogging the caucus this weekend.

This may give us an early peek into how blog coverage will stack up against traditional news coverage, in advance of blogger Josh Marshall's coverage of the New Hampshire primaries.

Does Daily Kos count as the press?

Well, he's heard some of the same criticisms frequently levelled at the "traditional media." For example, his open support of Howard Dean and his paid work for the Dean campaign have prompted some readers to question the objectivity of his analyses.

In general, though, it looks like this campaign will be an excellent glimpse at how blogs may influence or practice journalism. There are bloggers "adopting" journalists, scouring the work of individual reporters for signs of bias or inaccuracy. Bloggers are showing up in Slate's "Today's Papers" column. Something's happening. And we're watching.

Working the Campaign Desk

New today: The Campaign Desk, a project of Columbia's journalism school and the Columbia Journalism Review. Nick Lemann, dean of the j-school, explains what it's all about:

One of the minor rituals of American presidential politics is the post-election self-examination (or perhaps I should say self-flagellation) by the press. Quadrennially, we regret having pursued some lines of inquiry while ignoring others, or having gotten caught up in momentary feeding frenzies over unimportant things, or having been too susceptible to spin -- and then we resolve to do a better job next time. But now we have a new tool. In 2004, the Web makes it possible to analyze and criticize press coverage in real time, so that suggestions for improved coverage might actually be heeded, and incorporated into campaign coverage, while the campaign is still under way.

I bolded a line above because I'm wondering how The Campaign Desk will distinguish itself from the universe of blogs already analyzing and criticizing press coverage in real time.

Here's one possible answer: In a New York Times article today, The Campaign Desk's managing editor (Steve Lovelady, an experienced journalist) says that, in contrast to opinion blogs, his site is "run by and staffed by responsible journalists whose job is to monitor, critique and praise the campaign press, on a daily basis."

Here's another possible answer that occurs to me: The Campaign Desk could gather the best of the blog analysis together and make it easier for harried political journalists to digest.

In his introductory note, Lemann concludes:

We think CampaignDesk.org has the potential to add a dimension not just to press criticism, but to campaign coverage and even to American politics.

Not much has been posted on the site yet, but this will be one to watch in the months ahead. We've added it to our Politics Resources sidebar.

The New Republic Online: Campaign Journal

Since The New Republic Primary is over, TNR's started up a blog called the Campaign Journal. The posts so far have been interesting. Give it a look.

Web Wins Big in Politics Coverage

Much is being made of the Pew Research Center's survey of how people are getting their political news. The big headline seems to be that more people than ever, more liberals especially, find the news biased.

Just as significant, I think, is the finding that more people are abandoning traditional news sources and getting their political coverage from the Internet and cable tv. And Web users are better-informed about the campaigns than those who get most of their news from other sources.

Young people especially are leaving local and network news in droves. More and more of them are regularly getting their news over the Internet (from 9 percent in 2000 to 21 percent in this survey) and from comedy shows like the Daily Show (also 9 percent in 2000 to 21 percent here). But while the Web-informed are among those most educated about campaign events, comedy-show-watchers are among the least:

While late night and comedy shows may not impart much campaign information, the other growing resource for campaign information among younger people – the Internet – proves to be one of the most powerful tools available. Even when the fact that Internet users tend to be more educated and engaged is taken into account, young people who say they regularly learn about candidates and the campaign online are much better informed about the campaign than those who do not go online for such news.

By the way, endorsements, the generators of much media hoopla, don't matter all that much to folks.

Political Drama: Texas Redistricting

The top political story in Texas today is that a panel of judges upheld a Republican redistricting plan.

Okay, my eyes glazed over just typing that sentence.

What a challenging story: It's incremental (the fight over redistricting has been raging for months), it's technical ("redistricting"?), and it's a little abstract (this isn't a tax cut or a new health benefit).

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram covered this story from three angles on its web site this morning. How did its reporters handle those challenges?

The "Other" Candidates

Chances are you've got one of these folks in your state. They're the men and women running for President on the Democratic and Republican tickets, most having very little funding and media attention. But there's the possibility for some great stories from this bunch.

Don't miss this Fox News story (video link at bottom).