Poynter Focuses on Election Coverage

 in Fall 1995  tagged Elections


Fall 1995

Poynter Focuses on Election Coverage

By Deborah Potter

Coordinator, Poynter Election Project



Your news director has just named you the chief political reporter for 1996. Where do you turn for help?


You’re an editor, frustrated by campaign coverage dominated by meaningless straw polls, spin doctors and photo-ops. Where do you find new ideas for 1996?


Your news organization is committed to citizen-oriented election coverage. Where do you go to find out what difference it makes to communities and newsrooms?


One answer: The Poynter Institute for Media Studies.


In its 20th year as a school for professional journalists, Poynter is focusing on becoming a center of teaching and research on election coverage. Its goal is to help journalists improve coverage of political campaigns and elections by helping them better serve their communities.


Poynter is building on experience. In 1992, Poynter faculty worked with The Charlotte Observer and WSOC-TV to create a partnership that took a radically different approach to campaign coverage. In 1994, the Institute expanded its work to several news organizations and cities around the country, working closely with National Public Radio and its newspaper and television partners.


Now, Poynter is launching a national project that includes some new faculty: Pete Weitzel, a former Miami Herald editor who helped launch the “Voices of Florida” coalition in 1994, and Deborah Potter, a former network television correspondent experienced at covering national campaigns.


Poynter’s Election Project will include:

  • A handbook for journalists, The Poynter Election Handbook: New Ways of Covering Campaigns , which will be available in November 1995.

  • Special conferences for journalists in connection with major presidential campaign events.

  • Election coverage sessions in many regularly scheduled seminars in 1996.

  • A national survey to test the effect of new approaches to campaign coverage on communities and newsrooms.

  • Assistance and coaching in newsrooms to help journalists improve the quality of campaign and election coverage.

  • Collaboration with the Pew Center for Civic Journalism and others in projects designed to foster community-oriented election coverage.

Poynter believes it can help journalists improve newspaper, television and radio news by helping them listen more closely to the communities they cover.


The Poynter Election Project is based on these ideas:

  • Citizens, not just candidates, should set the campaign agenda.

  • Issues and policy deserve more, and more thoughtful, coverage.

  • A campaign should be viewed more like a job search than a popularity contest; a candidate’s qualifications for governing should be fully explored.

  • A campaign is not a series of isolated events and position papers; coverage should compare, contrast and repeat candidates’ views.

  • News organizations can do more to hold candidates accountable if they work in partnership with other news organizations.

The 1996 election poses several challenges for news organizations. The front-loaded primary calendar makes money more critical than ever. Candidates focused on fundraising may appeal to narrow interest groups, ignoring the broader citizens’ agenda. Paid advertising and talk shows may give candidates a way of speaking to citizens without addressing the issues most people care about.


By focusing election coverage on what citizens want and need to know, looking at issues in depth and in a deliberative way, news organizations can keep their eyes on the prize: helping citizens make informed decisions. The Poynter Election Project is designed to help news organizations make their readers, listeners and viewers allies in the cause of good journalism in a democracy.

(For more information, contact Deborah Potter at The Poynter Institute, 801 Third Street South, St. Petersburg, Fla. 33701. Phone: 813-821-9494 or e-mail: dpotter@poynter.org.)