early a year before the official opening of the 1996 presidential campaign, I had a conversation with David Keene, a thoughtful and respected figure in Republican presidential circles. He predicted that the change in the primary season calendar would have a huge impact on the race: Money would be more important than ever because the compressed schedule would leave no time for fund raising between primaries. The leisurely pace of the old primary campaign would be replaced by a breathless dash and the price of admission to the race would be $20 million. All that became part of the conventional wisdom nine months later, but at the time it was a revelation.
With Keene’s prediction – and the success of several 1994 election civic journalism initiatives that the Pew Center had fostered – in mind, a discussion was convened at the Nieman Foundation’s Lippman House over Presidents’ Day weekend, 1995. Journalists from around the country gathered in Cambridge to discuss how they could avoid the shallowness of the sound-bite, photo-op campaign coverage that had become the norm. Print journalists from New Hampshire talked to broadcasters from the same state, ditto the California delegation. As the gloom of a New England winter weekend enveloped them, they worked on strategic plans to serve better the voters of their states.
While they refined their plans, we at the Pew Center for Civic Journalism began writing a proposal to the Pew Charitable Trusts. We told them that the new schedule of primaries would have a corrosive effect on citizens, and that the candidates’ need to raise large sums just to be taken seriously would distance the campaign from the voters. We proposed a strategy that we felt would encourage issues-oriented coverage from the start. By putting as much effort as possible into the two states that vote the earliest – Iowa and New Hampshire – we felt there might be an opportunity to set a better tone for the rest of the campaign. We added Florida and California because outstanding journalists in both those mega-states had the experience and the talent to form media partnerships that might stand a chance of elevating the campaign.
In Philadelphia, home of the Trusts, reaction to the proposal was positive. It was seen as an extension of the mission of the Center, which has worked since its founding in 1993 to bring citizens’ concerns to the newsroom and to make those concerns central in the political dialogue. As Project Director Stan Cloud observes in the Introduction to this report, there is a consensus among most thoughtful journalists “that something [is] radically wrong with political journalism.” The University of Maryland College of Journalism signed on to advise and administer this effort.
Our hopes were high as the political season approached and the importance of early money became clear. Texas Senator Phil Gramm, whose campaign, ironically, would be the first to collapse, said: “In politics, money is the best friend you can have.” Not voters.
We learned again the lesson from 1994: That when news organizations decide that the citizens’ agenda, not the political agenda, will be the foundation of their political coverage, it is very threatening to political consultants. They understand the rules of the old game extremely well: Give the media occasional photo opportunities, buy plenty of TV ads and use them to attack one’s opponent, stay away from issues unless absolutely necessary, heighten conflict even when it’s about things that won’t matter much once the election is over. Consultants, it seems, don’t care for citizen forums unless they pick the citizens. Avoid engaging citizens in discussions of real issues, they tell their clients.
Fortunately, the idea that the campaign is a job interview in which the citizens get to ask the questions, that public affairs is not a dialogue between just politicians and journalists but ought to include citizens and their concerns, is taking root. But there are plenty of obstacles and the battle to return voters to their rightful place at the center of things is not over.
Perhaps the benediction for this project was best expressed by Joe Magruder, Associated Press Northern New England news editor. The AP cooperated with the Telegraph of Nashua and New Hampshire Public Radio to produce a series of candidate forums. Magruder said he was more satisfied with his coverage of this year’s presidential primary than of any of the other four he had covered. A reading of this report will show you why.
Ed Fouhy
– April, 1996