You're not alone: Editors share chief struggles of coordinating comprehensive election coverage

Share your concerns and/or ways in which you deal with covering your town's candidates and election issues.

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The following observations were collected by Chris Peck from participants in API's City and Metro Editors seminar, held Jan. 18-22, 2004. The names were withheld to preserve the "off-the-record" nature of the majority of API's seminars.

The struggle is to make judgments without being judgmental. Unfortunately, not all candidates are equal. Some are from major parties and well-financed and others are from fringe parties with little money. Some have serious ideas and some are running as a lark. Their seriousness and depth of ideas cannot always be determined by whether they are running under the banner of an established party. I always struggle to develop a realistic format that gives each candidate sufficient space to present their ideas – space that is appropriate to their candidacy.

How do we make political stories interesting and relevant to readers? Most people don’t vote in local, state or national elections. We try to get reader interest with polls. And we have done reader panel stories on candidates and issues during the campaign. But still, I get the feeling that readers’ eyes glaze over when they see election stories during the campaign.

Making generally apathetic residents interested in what we’re writing about. In the particular area where I work, the political scene is heavily dominated by Republicans. For example, nary a Democrat filed for a local office for the upcoming primary races.
We report the news, look for trends and try to dig up the unknown for our readers. But it’s hard to balance the responsibility we feel to cover and write about such things when the public is clearly comfortable where things stand, or uninterested in doing anything to change the status quo.

Getting candidates to talk – and reporters to write – specifically about the issues. Virtually every local candidate wants to say he’s in favor of lower taxes and more jobs; state and national candidates only want to hit talking points. Inexperienced reporters have a difficult time getting beyond this. It’s also difficult connecting with readers – determining what they really want to know vs. printing the basic biographical information that’s the stuff of convention, and making it all fit on one page.

Making the politics relevant to readers who tune out the typical she said/he said. This happens because candidates are allowed to drive the dialogue, not voters/readers. Successful candidates/campaigns have an energy around them. We need to figure out a way to create that energy around the election process that will encourage readers/voters to become fully engaged – and that assures them that they’re driving the agenda, not the candidate.

Making sure candidates address all the major issues in their communities, not just the ones they bring up in their campaigns and are asked in candidate forums. Also, making sure they answer our questions; if they don’t, even after a reporter has rephrased them, and after we’ve made it clear to the politician that we intend to say he/she did not answer the question, we must explain that clearly to the readers.

We face two distinct challenges:
1. We don’t have the resources to cover all the candidates adequately. (Or, at least we think we don’t have the resources. Maybe that’s part of our problem.) We have a total of 16 reporters for all things [in our coverage area]. I believe “dabbling” in the political coverage does a disservice to our readers, as we are unable to give them a clear view of each candidate.
2. How do we cover controversial political issues when the newspaper’s opinion pages have been aggressively advocating one side?

One of the biggest challenges is trying to be fair. This year, with so many Democratic presidential candidates crisscrossing the state, we have to be sure to cover them without going overboard or appearing biased. Our general rule was that if they are in our coverage area, we will cover them – once. The other big challenge is trying to teach inexperienced reporters how to cover candidates against the backdrop of the caucuses.

Trying to write stories about what’s on voters’ minds (without being boring). For example, issues that always come up: taxes, education and over-development of land. How can we put a fresh spin on issues that are in the news all the time, but they become even more of an issue during election time?

The biggest challenge we have dealing with local political coverage is the fact that we’re covering races in eight counties, with limited resources. That means we’ve got to figure out ways to give election information the readers need across a broad area and find issues and themes that cross the county lines. Overall, it’s the issue of making sure the coverage remains relevant to readers rather than digressing into the platforms the candidates are pushing. Often, they’re talking about things that have little real impact on the readers or have little relation to the offices they are running to win.

My biggest challenge is organizing the massive amount of information and ensuring accuracy and fairness. For all contested races in four counties, we run for each candidate a bio, answers to a few questions and a mug (typically, 500 to 900 candidates).
The bios are written by the candidates themselves. They’re full of landmines: they can’t spell their own spouse’s or children’s names, they make unsubstantiated and confusing statements about their opponents and themselves. After a month of intense work, I wonder whether voters find the guide of any use?

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