By April Lynch
ou know you’ve stumbled onto a project that just might work when people are angry about being left out.
“What about my neighborhood?” a clearly upset Maria Arcedo yelled into the “Voice of the Voter” hotline that had been set up to handle calls from citizens during the 1995 San Francisco mayoral race. “The Mission District is a big neighborhood. We better hear from you guys pretty soon.”
Drawing all the response was a neighborhood-by-neighborhood look at city issues and citizen opinions in the mayoral campaign, and it quickly became clear that interest from the public would not be a problem. On July 31, the day the “Voice of the Voter” project was launched, more than 300 people called about the initiative. Even among the dozens of irate calls from excluded neighborhoods two messages were clear:
Civic journalism in the mayoral race could go as far as “Voice of the Voter” partners KRON-TV, KQED-FM radio and The San Francisco Chronicle could extend it.
The work would have a definite impact.
“I am very happy to see that The Chronicle, KQED and KRON will be covering San Francisco neighborhoods regarding the issues that concern us most,” city resident Janet Shirley wrote via America On-Line. “The city has needed something like this for a long time.” In its six-month run, through stories, polls, and citizen feedback, the “Voice of the Voter” mayoral partnership learned some important lessons about bringing civic journalism to local races, namely:
Municipal elections offer an excellent chance to approach issues on a very focused level and to establish ongoing connections with neighborhoods and citizens (although the amount of work involved can be almost overwhelming).
Being able to take a “micro” approach to a civic journalism project does not mean that cultural and language barriers in diverse cities will automatically be easier to surmount.
As news organizations learn more about civic journalism, so do professional campaign managers. Campaign consultants will try to use the project to their advantage, and project partners need to be wary.
DRAWING ON 1994’S LESSONS
The “Voice of the Voter” partners were building on previous civic journalism experience. The partnership was first formed in 1994, when the three news organizations teamed up to give Californians a greater role in that year’s gubernatorial race. That effort had many successes, but the partners felt it was only a start.
The mayoral race provided a smaller arena, but in some ways the cast of characters was livelier. Eight candidates were running for mayor, ranging from a perennial entrant whose slogan was “life is a party” to the mercurial daughter of a powerful Italian-American family, one of whose members, Joseph Alioto, had been San Francisco’s mayor during the 1960s. But the main contenders were the incumbent mayor (and former police chief) Frank Jordan; plus gay rights advocate and former HUD official Roberta Achtenberg; and long-time Speaker of the State Assembly Willie Brown, the most powerful Democrat in California.
With such high-visibility candidates, there was a good chance that the citizens of San Francisco would get lost in all the hoopla of the campaign. Hence the “Voice of the Voter” partnership’s neighborhoods project. San Francisco’s two dozen neighborhoods have distinct identities and political alliances. Cutting across their geographic boundaries are all the city’s other “communities,” defined by race, ethnicity, sexual orientation or common interest.
“You have to think about the gay community, the Korean community, the Irish community, plus all the geographic communities of the neighborhoods,” said KQED News Director Raul Ramirez.
Although there was some concern among the partners that their regional audiences might find the neighborhood series too local to be useful, in the end it was decided that the race had regional appeal. “San Francisco is the central city of the region,” said ChronicleManaging Editor Dan Rosenheim. “On top of that we had the advantage of having Willie Brown in the race, and his presence made it so compelling.”
From its experience in the governors race, the partnership knew that each news organization would complement the others in various ways, but that it would be useful to have a coordinator who could pull things together. Early in the fall, the partners hired Claire Greene, a journalist with previous experience in radio reporting and producing, to work on community outreach. Greene built a citizen database and kept in regular contact with neighborhood and community groups.
“The challenge was to find people who knew issues and were working in the trenches, but didn’t have a political mission,” Greene said. “And you have to find people who are articulate, and can be articulate in three different media.”
During the early planning sessions, it was agreed that polls would be conducted to gauge voter concerns. The partners also agreed to co-sponsor (with the Commonwealth Club) candidate debates before the Nov. 7 election. (As the election was thrown into a runoff, the “Voice of the Voter” also co-sponsored a debate between Jordan and Brown just prior to the runoff election.) Citizen input would be solicited through community outreach, broadcast promotional spots and reader boxes in The Chronicle.
Having agreed to cover specific city neighborhoods on a regular basis, the partners used U.S. Census data and the Registrar of Voters office to develop profiles of San Francisco’s two dozen neighborhoods. In the end, nine were selected on the basis of their ethnic, social and political characteristics. The residents of some neighborhoods, for example, were notable for having participated in a wide range of civic issues, while in others hardly anyone bothered even to vote.
Each of the three partners was assigned three neighborhoods to follow through the campaign. As a practical matter, however, and given the different nature of each medium in the partnership, the partners’ approaches differed.
The Chronicle, with the largest newshole of the three, did the most extensive neighborhood coverage – five take-outs in all, running through the campaign. Some were timed to coincide with the debates or other campaign events. The Chronicle also published a week-long series of stories on issues of importance to voters, based on the earlier “Voice of the Voter” poll.
KQED, an NPR station and a natural place for community conversations, did fewer neighborhood pieces but broadcast a number of citizen discussions and forums. In addition, the station organized a panel discussion featuring questions posed to the candidates by a panel of citizens. Prior to the runoff, KQED aired a community conversation on the city’s future and the role of government.
KRON-TV, an NBC affiliate, also did fewer neighborhood spots, but used its air time to put viewers into direct contact with the candidates. In addition to being the main producer of the televised debates, the station conducted a series of live “mini-debates,” each featuring two candidates and questions from citizens. Some were held in the studio, others at locations of the campaigns’ choosing. The remotes were not always easy to arrange. “Jordan wanted a shot on Treasure Island, with the backdrop of the city behind him,” said KRON producer Stacy Owen. “But that’s in the middle of San Francisco Bay, and the wind was so strong it was hitting his mike and competing with his own voice. He tried to turn this into a staged event, and it backfired.”
A MIXED EXPERIENCE
The first neighborhood reports ran on July 31. The first poll appeared the day after Labor Day, when the mayoral campaigns shifted into high gear. The full-scale debates were held in October and November and featured videotaped questions as well as live questions by a panel of three journalists. Both debates were critiqued afterward by a citizens panel.
Overall, the “Voice of the Voter” experience was mixed. On the plus side was the citizen input. The scope of the election and the neighborhood focus, along with Greene’s outreach work, allowed the partnership to feature citizens’ opinions and queries prominently in every story, conversation or debate.
In the first debate, a hardball question from a citizen on the city’s spending on the homeless stumped the candidates. On that issue and others, the panel of three reporters, with representatives from each partner, asked follow-ups to make sure citizens’ questions were answered.
In a race with such a colorful slew of candidates, it would have been easy for coverage to be overwhelmed by stories on the horse race. But voters were most concerned with such issues as homelessness and crime. Beyond questions asked during the debate, people also asked tough questions via the hotline, e-mail and letters about youth violence, health care and drivers who perpetually run red lights.
The public’s response was largely positive. Even people who thought the project was a dumb idea – such as the skeptic who sent in an e-mail headlined “Re: Your Poll, Get Serious” – seemed to welcome the opportunity to argue the issues and get media coverage. But staff working on the project quickly learned that success can be troublesome.
On some days, hundreds of hotline calls had to be downloaded. Letters deserved at least a minimal response. E-mail missives were easier to handle because the messages could be stored and then answered with an automated response.
Geographical areas that were not part of the neighborhood project also demanded and deserved attention. The partners incorporated those areas into other aspects of their campaign coverage, such as stories on citywide issues. That approach helped but never fully solved the dilemma.
Editors, producers and news directors were trying to handle civic journalism planning and public response in addition to other, more traditional campaign coverage – investigative pieces, candidate profiles, campaign analysis and daily stories. Over a six-month period, the pace was exhausting.
The media partners did their best to spread out the work load. KQED, for example, had reporter Jason Beaubien covering the neighborhoods and the campaign, but put other “Voice of the Voter” assignments in the hands of morning news anchor David Wright. The Chronicle had up to six reporters covering the race, although John King had primary responsibility for both the neighborhood profiles and the overall campaign. Working both aspects helped broaden his perspective and strengthened his reporting, King said. For example, while pundits were predicting a drop in Brown’s support just before the first election, King knew it wouldn’t happen – his work in the neighborhoods told him that.
But there is a fine line between having a broad base of coverage and being stretched too thin. “I felt better sitting in someone’s garage talking than being spun by a campaign manager on the phone,” King said. “But I felt kind of unfocused on the race sometimes. It wasn’t an efficient structure, but it was still better than asking campaign consultants what the neighborhoods think.”
The issue of which candidates to include in partnership events quickly became a problem. “Because this was a city election, it was easier in some ways than the governor’s race,” said KQED’s Ramirez. “But the candidates themselves were not any easier. Civic journalism is still a bitter pill for them to swallow.”
All the candidates in the early days of the mayoral race were invited to join KQED’s on-air forum. But the partners feared that having so many candidates take part in the televised debate would be unworkable. They decided to limit the first debate to the contenders who had shown more than five percent support in the “Voice of the Voter” poll: Brown, Jordan and Achtenberg.
Candidate Ben Hom did not like that decision. The well-financed Hom’s poll numbers were low, but he blamed his poor showing on what he said was the poll’s failure to address adequately his main constituency, the Chinese-American community. If the project was about inclusion, he said, how could the partners exclude the only Asian candidate in the race from the debate?
But the partnership, out of fairness to all the other campaigns, stuck to its decision. A handful of Hom supporters picketed outside the first debate, and Hom himself tried to enter the studio during the event but was barred by security guards.
“The concept of what is representative and balanced changes with each campaign and each debate,” said KRON Programming Director Janette Gitler, who did most of the pre-debate negotiating with the campaigns. “It is tricky.”
In contrast to the problem of limiting the number of candidates in the televised debate, the desire to be as inclusive as possible with citizen-questioners and panels also caused difficulties. Some campaigns tried to infiltrate panels and forums with their own supporters, with some early success. Two campaigns sneaked supporters into the group asking questions on the KQED forum, which angered the other campaigns. As a defensive measure, coordinator Greene quickly developed a questionnaire for potential panelists to try to screen out interlopers.
“It’s very hard, in the middle of an election cycle, to sort out who has an agenda and who doesn’t,” said Greene. “Even the most benign contacts can be loaded.”
For the first televised debate, the partnership worked to have a post-debate citizen critique panel that was racially and politically diverse. At the last minute, however, two Jordan supporters backed out. Despite the walkout, the critique was fairly even-handed, but, in assessing who “won” and who “lost,” the panel gave a slight nod to Brown. The Jordan campaign charged that the panel did not have enough white conservative voters and threatened to stay away from the runoff debate if another panel was convened. After several tense discussions, the partners convinced the campaign to join the second debate and give the panel concept another chance. The second post-debate panel, though equally balanced among Jordan and Brown backers and undecided voters, was highly critical of both candidates. This time, the Brown campaign was unhappy with the panel’s makeup.
“They all felt the citizen panels were a sham, and we do need to revisit how that works,” said KRON’s Gitler. “What does a balanced citizens panel look like if it is addressing issues versus the horse race? What is a situation that is truly representative or balanced?”
ASSESSING THE GAINS
The project ended with the running of the last neighborhood piece on the day Brown took office as mayor of San Francisco. Looking back, the partners think they made some important gains.
Civic journalism helped keep issues at the forefront, both within newsrooms and on the campaign trail. The debates, with citizen questions, were a good example of how to blend more traditional debate formats with the techniques of civic journalism. KQED’s Beaubien was impressed by the entire effort. “It forces you to get away from the candidates,” he said. “They could have you running around every day on their agenda, covering their reaction to the latest hit piece.”
The mayors race was an important learning step for the partnership. Among things to be kept in mind for the next time are the following:
Newsrooms need to commit as many resources as they can to such projects. The amount of work, while worthwhile, is massive. When the project is combined with other responsibilities, it can be overwhelming.
In local elections, take every advantage of the smaller focus. Small neighborhood debates, for example, would have given this project greater impact. Media partners that publish or broadcast in other languages could have helped with outreach among immigrant communities.
Partners need to meet often and be ready to regroup or change direction if necessary. The outcry from neighborhoods that were not part of the profile effort was a clear example of why planners need to stay flexible.
Did the project reach civic journalism’s overall goal of overcoming the “disconnect” between citizens, the media and the political process? As in 1994, the answer is – not yet.
Said KRON’s Owen: “In many ways, the people we’ve been in contact with so far are already involved, and we’re preaching to the choir. We need to stay away from that, and push farther.”
Said The Chronicle’s Rosenheim: “I’m not satisfied we’ve figured out how to make civic journalism work. But for our readers, the best thing to do is just keep finding new things to try.”
And said KQED’s Ramirez: “We’re going through a very intense editorial process in our newsrooms, with our audiences, with public officials and with those who run their campaigns. Every time we do this we all learn something, and it gets easier.”
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