TV Election Initiatives Seek New Ideas

Pilot partnerships have formed in 11 major markets to develop innovative election coverage as part of the Best Practices 2000 project, a partnership of Wisconsin Public Television, the Pew Center, RTNDF and PBS.

The Best Practices 2000’s (BP2K) national workshops and partnerships have “demonstrated how eager people really are to cover campaigns in new ways,” says Dave Iverson, BP2K project director, (www.bp2k.org).

Shared Researcher

In Boston, WCBV-TV, a Hearst-Argyle station and ABC affiliate, has teamed with WGBH, the PBS station, in sharing a researcher to generate ad-watch and web-watch reports.

WCVB News Director Candy Altman says the monitoring has documented trends in a way that haphazard viewing could not, like the fact that candidate advertising in the New Hampshire primary was “very personal as opposed to negative.”

The researcher, whose salary is subsidized by a BP2K grant, is now gathering material on political donors and other campaign finance issues.

Soapboxes in Kansas City

Kansas City’s KCTV, a CBS affiliate owned by Meredith Corp., and KCPT, the PBS affiliate, are working on new ways to inject citizen voices into the campaign by using an old concept: the soapbox.

The vending machine-sized units containing a camera and videotape recorder were developed by Toronto’s City TV and are licensed to KCTV (and other Meredith stations) under the banner “Speaker’s Corner.”

They are placed in public places and people simply look into the lens, press a button and record their thoughts and opinions, which are then edited into short newscast clips or longer programming.

The partners plan to use the video soapboxes to gather citizen comment about election issues. They can also test whether the “boxes” bring more new voices into their stories about civic issues.

Nick Haines, executive producer of public affairs news/programming at partner KCPT, will use the Speaker’s Corner material for “breaks” between PBS programs and for locally produced campaign issues stories, especially those involving Kansas City schools. BP2K funding defrays the costs of moving four video boxes to various locations.

Bilingual Reporting in L.A.

In Los Angeles, Univision’s KMEX-TV has joined with PBS station KCET to bring bilingual campaign reporting to the web. The stations are translating their stories into English and Spanish and putting the transcripts on the “Decision/Destino 2000” web site at www.kcet.org.

Val Zavala, KCET vice president for news and public affairs, says the effort, while cumbersome, provides a model for other news organizations. It works this way: Reporter’s scripts are run through a computer program that provides a “rough” translation. That transcript is e-mailed to a professional translator who edits and corrects it, then e-mails it back to the newsroom, where an editor reviews the story and passes it on to the web master.

Zavala hopes the project will eventually lead to other joint efforts, perhaps on literacy or the Census, or a bilingual town hall meeting in which both Spanish- and English-speaking citizens participate.

The project will include coverage of the Democratic Party convention and of statewide races and ballot propositions.

Other BP2K Pilot Projects:

Dallas, TX

Partners: WFAA (ABC) and KERA (PBS)
To report on the increasingly influential Latino vote in Texas.

Miami, FL

Partners: WTVJ (NBC) and the University of Miami
To examine key issues as framed by Miami citizens and use e-mail and the web as an extension of news gathering and on-air reporting.

Minneapolis, MN

Partners: Minneapolis Star Tribune and KTCA (PBS) with WCCO-AM (CBS)
To continue the Minnesota Citizens’ forum.

Philadelphia, PA

WTXF (Fox) and WHYY (PBS)
To develop citizen-based coverage of the Republican Party convention in Philadelphia.

Rochester, NY

Partners: WOKR (ABC) and WXXI (PBS)
To focus on the New York Senate race and redistricting.

San Francisco, CA

Partners: KRON (NBC) and KQED (PBS) with Bay-TV
To develop a broadcast special on one of California’s ballot initiatives.

Seattle, WA

Partners: KING (NBC) and KCTS (PBS)
To use issue polling to frame coverage and do ad-watch reports.

Tampa, FL

WFLA (NBC) and WUSF (PBS)
To research and report on whether candidates target different demographic groups with different messages.