STUMP: media and politics

More on the 'Net as Resource

A new study from BURST! Media, which sells advertising across a network of sites, released a new study of 12,000 Web users about how they will use the Web to research campaign information. Here's what they said:

Among definite voters, the Internet will play a much larger role as a resource for gathering information about candidates and the key issues they will cover than during the last election. Seventy percent of young adults between the ages of 18 and 24 plan to use the Internet for information on the upcoming election. The percentage is close to 60 percent in other definite voter age segments.

Older voters are also increasingly turning to the Internet for campaign information. Sixty-one percent of senior citizen voters plan to use the Internet for gathering info, which is 23.5 percent more than during the mid-term elections in 2002. Fifteen and twenty percent increases are also expected in the 45-54 and 55-64 age groups, respectively.

Thanks to MediaPost for the news item. We've requested the full study. If they send it, look for more details here and on Poynter Online's Convergence Chaser

Politics Seminar Wrap-Up

Poynter's Pam Johnson, a co-director of last week's Election Coverage Workshop, has written some concluding thoughts about the conference. Take a look.

Politics Research on the Web

Al Tompkins, Poynter’s Broadcast group leader, walked our political journalists through the process of doing some quick research online (Step 1: Get the Google Toolbar), giving them a giant, annotated list of Internet resources for political coverage and research. Here’s the list, with Al’s caveat that all information obtained from the Internet should be subjected to further research before being touted as truth.

The Two Dans

Dan Weintraub has a split personality.

One Dan Weintraub is a columnist for the Sacramento Bee. That Dan writes about policy, and steers clear of campaign minutiae. He is not a horse-race reporter; he hasn't cited a poll all year. He doesn't write about how candidates get elected; he writes about what they might do once they are elected. He wants to help his readers evaluate politicians and vote intelligently.

The other Dan Weintraub is the California Insider.

In the run-up to the recall, that Dan wrote ten or twelve short items a day, with headlines like: "The Gray and Arnold dance." "The bombshell." "McClintock-Bustamante matchup." Nowadays, he's posting items like: "Two Brulte aides in key slots." "Gray's rearguard."

Civic journalism it ain't. But it's fun, it's fresh, and it's popular.

So why did Dan Weintraub, in his own words, "sell out"?

How the Net Changes Everything

The fact that you’re reading this probably means you’re one of the plugged-in, next-gen Internet users who know what a blog is. You probably have a broadband Internet connection at home. Very possibly, you use Google as a verb. And if you’re hyper-L337, you read The Note.

Howard Finberg, faculty leader of Poynter’s Interactive Learning initiative, has news for you: You’re not alone.

In fact, you’re one point in an exploding population of Internet users who are becoming savvier and savvier about using this medium to acquire and use information, Finberg said. And news organizations stand to gain a heck of a lot from attracting you and the expanding audience you represent.

Finberg gave our political journos some data points to work from as they consider this new audience, as well as some guidance to spark their imaginations about where to go next.

How many people are online?

Looking at Demographics

How many people live in America?

I’ll spare you a trip to Census.gov – about 290 million.

What percentage identify as white? Around 80 percent.
Black? Around 13 percent.
Latino? Also around 13 percent.
Asian? Just over 4 percent.

What’s wrong with these numbers?

Reforming Political Coverage

Reforming politics coverage, Roy Peter Clark told our political coverage crew, requires an act of imagination.

Let's begin by viewing our readers as people who will be engaged in our democracy if properly informed about the issue of the day, and our politicians as leaders who will act responsibly if held accountable for their actions.

What would journalism look like if we accepted responsibility not only for making information available to these citizens, but also for actually informing them?

Like this, said Clark. A sparkling sample of journalism-in-motion that Clark describes as "civics journalism" (not, by any means, to be confused with civic journalism).

What's so great about this piece? I'll let Clark tell you in his own words.

Here are some tips from Roy Peter Clark, mostly in his words:

The Art of Asking Questions

Neil Brown is here to tell us that “horse race coverage,” the media’s reliance on polls to cover political campaigns, is not the enemy of substantial issues coverage, as many journalists believe.

Polls have shown, Brown said, tongue only very slightly in cheek, that horse race coverage is what most interests readers. And if it brings more people to our pages, Brown said, it’s a mistake to take it out, because done well, polls can complement our exploration of the issues.

The way to improve our coverage of the issues isn’t to eliminate horse race coverage, Brown said, but to do it better. We don’t want to do The Story of the Environment, he said; we want specific stories targeted to interest and inform our readers, to “go narrow and drill deep,” to borrow Brown’s phrase. To do that, we need deep, accurate information about people’s opinions and interests. And the best way to get that info, he said, is to ask a pollster.

With that, he introduced Rob Schroth, of the polling firm Schroth and Associates.

Making Politics Exciting

Imagine 2004 is the first election we've ever covered.

That's some of the advice Tom Fiedler of the Miami Herald offered to our election coverage seminarians. In other words, just because it's been done one way before, that doesn't mean it has to be done that way now.

Imagine your politics pages looked like your sports pages.

Take a look at some sports pages. They pop with pictures and sizzle with stats; they're exciting and fun and aimed at a local audience and everything, pretty much, that our politics pages often are not.

But could be.

Ethics of Political Coverage

"The best time to deal with an ethical issue is before it becomes a problem." — Bob Steele

Steele's presentation to our merry band of political journalists stressed the importance of establishing a set of values to consider in dealing with ethical potholes. Steele also led a few conversations about ethics, giving us a model for how to ask these questions in our own newsrooms. We're not attempting to write rules, Steele said, but to establish protocols for talking about these issues.

The seminar participants split into small groups and considered four issues: privacy, resources, race, and bias. Here are some of the questions they came up with for each issue, and some of the values they want to uphold in considering these questions: