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Your Vote in '92 Contents Your Vote in '92 Your Vote in '92 In cooperation with the Poynter Institute for Media Studies and WSOC-TV, the local ABC affiliate, the Observer abandoned the "horse race" approach to the 1992 campaign and focused its reporting on what voters said mattered to them. An initial poll of 1,000 residents led to the formation of a "citizens' agenda" which became the organizing principle for reader-driven coverage of the election. Five hundred of those respondents agreed to serve on a "citizens' panel" to help the Observer keep its focus on the public's concerns, rather than the machinations of the candidates or the weekly flux of campaign events. Issues from the citizen's agenda dominated the coverage, with the emphasis on answering reader questions, explaining the candidates' positions and exploring possible solutions. Queries from readers were regularly put to the candidates and campaign staffs; polls and strategy stories were downplayed. The revamped coverage was coupled with a voter-registration campaign. A case study by Project on Public Life and the Press New York University Department of Journalism 10 Washington Pl. New York, NY 10003 (212) 998-3793 © Project on Public Life and the Press,1994 The Project is funded by a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Charlotte Observer (newspaper)
P.O. Box 32188
Charlotte, NC 28232
(704) 358-3070 (phone)
(704) 358-5036 (fax) Ownership
Knight-Ridder
No. newsroom employees: 240 Circulation
232,000 (daily)
298,000 (Sunday)
Circulation Area (pop.)
13-county Charlotte metro area (1.6 million) Initiative
Taking Back Our Neighborhoods Date:
June 1994-December 1994 Lead Editor:
Rick Thames, metro editor Executive in charge
(if different from above):
Jennie Buckner, executive editor When and how did this initiative get started?
Like others in journalism, Executive Editor Rich Oppel was dissatisfied with press performance in past campaigns, particularly with horse-race polling, which had miscalled a 1990 Senate race. He and Publisher Rolfe Neill were inclined to try something different. Meanwhile, the Poynter Institute was looking for a way to demonstrate that a revised approach was possible. Aware of the progress that had been made in the Wichita Eagle's 1990 election coverage, the two institutions agreed to cooperate, adding as a partner WSOC-TV, with whom the paper had conducted joint polling in the past. What were the goals of the initiative?
To ground campaign coverage in issues that concerned citizens and were relevant to governance after the election; to create reader-driven (rather than candidate-driven) coverage routines; to better advocate what voters wanted the campaign to be about. What did the initiative entail?
The search for a "citizens' agenda" began in January with a poll of 1,000 adults conducted by a Knight-Ridder subsidiary and jointly sponsored by WSOC-TV (cost: $18,000). The poll asked residents what they were concerned about and what they wanted the candidates to discuss. Six areas of concern emerged: the economy and taxes, crime and drugs, health care, education, the environment, and a general sense that family and community life were weakening. These became the "citizens' agenda." The reader-driven approach was introduced in a front-page column by Oppel, followed a week later by a detailed analysis of the citizens' agenda. Subsequent coverage told stories through the eyes and lives of citizens, relying heavily on readers' phoned-in comments and questions from the citizen's panel. Emphasis was placed on solutions as well as problems. With the citizens' agenda - rather than campaign tactics - driving the coverage, reporters specializing in business, education, health and religion were recruited to write political stories. Profiles of the candidates were accompanied by grids comparing candidates' statements and records with the voters' agenda. Observer reporters on the campaign trail asked questions from specific readers; replies were published under a regular heading, "Ask the Candidates." Before the state primary, Pat Buchanan was interviewed by eight members of the citizen's panel. Three panel members questioned gubernatorial candidates at a debate on school reform. For three Sunday evenings in October, WSOC-TV featured a televised conversation among citizens, keyed to issues explored in the Sunday Observer. How many people worked on it?
Virtually the entire staff, from business reporters to feature writers. What did it look like in the newspaper?
Coverage of the presidential race almost doubled over the previous campaign - some 18,000 square inches compared to 10,500 in '88. According to Poynter, issue coverage went from 1,890 square inches. in 1988 (18 percent of total) to 5,716 square inches in 1992 (32 percent). Coverage of campaign strategy fell from 21 percent of total in 1988 to 11 percent in 1992; horse-race polls declined from 6.1 percent to 1.4 percent. Hard news coverage of what the candidates did and said was consistent in percentage terms with 1988. Readers appeared far more often in the coverage, substituting for experts in quotes, seeing their questions answered, being invited to phone in with feedback and further questions. The reader-driven approach was itself a topic in the news pages, with frequent columns from the editor explaining it and inviting comment. Graphic design became a major element in the coverage, with complex grids comparing candidates' statements and records with the citizen's agenda, or setting off their promises against their voting history. Because of the emphasis on the citizen's agenda and the candidates' relation to it, much of the daily wire service copy - focusing, as it does, on daily machinations - was unsuitable. That placed extra demands on research facilities and meant more coverage was produced in-house. Response to the Initiative In the newsroom:
Metro Editor Rick Thames, who coordinated the project, said reporters were hesitant at first because the approach was new. "We didn't know if it would work and neither did they." But reporters also felt the frustration of 1988 and it was difficult to defend the old routines. Thames: "It took courage to say at a press conference, 'I have a question from Betsy Smith, a college student, who wants to know...' Heads would turn." As the experiment unfolded reporters gained confidence, according to Thames, "because they knew they were providing something readers wanted. They had seen the data; they had talked to these folks a lot. After a while, it made them more aggressive." The project was a lot of work; the extra energy required to do things in a new way took a toll on the staff. Elements incorporated into regular newsroom routines and/or culture:
Before the initiative began, Oppel remarked "if we do campaign coverage this way, it will change the way we do everything here." The Observer is currently adapting the approach it followed in 1992 to the coverage of education and the state legislature. Response in the community:
Thames said "our hate mail went down to almost zero." (Others said the hate mail got more lively.) Public accusations of bias generally failed to materialize. "I kept waiting for those accusations to come, and they never really did." Response to the invitation to participate was high, as evidenced by the 500 volunteers for the citizen's panel and 2,400 calls to phone lines with comments or questions. Poynter studied reader reaction. One in four Observer readers said they noticed a change in political coverage, compared to one in eight for competing news sources. Among survey respondents, enthusiasm for the coverage and accusations of bias tended to be higher for the Observer as compared to competitors. Frequency of readership went up during the 10-month campaign for the Observer; for competitors it remained flat. In focus groups, enthusiasm for the paper's charts and explanatory graphics was high. Among political leaders:
Candidates were sometimes reluctant to take specific enough stands for the comparisons the Observer sought to run. The paper printed white space after U.S. Sen. Terry Sanford and another Senate candidate refused to enunciate positions. They later relented. When questions from readers were posed in public it was harder for the candidates to refuse, and they generally didn't. Did any outside group pick up the newspaper's initiative and carry it further?
A number of newspapers began borrowing from the Observer's approach during the 1992 campaign. Building, in part, on the Charlotte experience, Poynter, National Public Radio, the Kettering Foundation and the Pew Charitable Trusts will collaborate in a project to improve coverage of the 1994 elections in selected cities. Overall lessons - successes and failures:
Voter turnout in Mecklenberg County was up over 1988, as it was elsewhere, but the increase was greater for Mecklenberg - 63 percent of adults voted, as compared to 55 percent nationwide and 52 percent statewide. The county elections supervisor credits the Observer's coverage with spurring the increase, but the connection cannot be proved. What's next:
Thames: "A lot of readers said to us, 'We love what you did, but don't stop. What are you going to do a year from now?'" Thus, the revamp of education and legislative coverage. Case study written by Lisa Austin, Assistant Director of the Project on Public Life and the Press, July 1994. Lisa is also a member of the CPN Journalism editorial team. More Information Project on Public Life and the Press
New York University
Department of Journalism
10 Washington Pl.
New York, NY 10003
(212) 998-3793 Index Taking Back Our Neighborhoods
Education
Your Voice in North Carolina
Freedom Park Conversations
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