NPR Election Project

 in Winter 1995  tagged Research

Winter 1995

The NPR Election Project


During 1994, National Public Radio teamed with The Poynter Institute for Media Studies to coach public radio affiliates and their newspaper and television partners in making voter concerns the focus of their election coverage. The project was spearheaded by NPR Editorial Director John Dinges and Edward D. Miller of Poynter. The project was funded by grants from the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Carnegie Corporation.


Although NPR and Poynter are working with media in several communities, the Election Project focused on five cities: Boston, San Francisco, Seattle, Dallas and Wichita.




BOSTON, MASS.

In “The People’s Voice” project, the Boston Globe teamed up with WBZ-TV and WBUR-FM to hold forums to identify issues that Massachusetts voters said they wanted candidates to address in this year’s elections. The Globe told its readers the project “marks a redefinition” of its political coverage, “a departure from covering candidates squabbling about issues as voters sit helplessly on the sidelines and the beginning of a pointed dialogue between candidates and voters about Massachusetts’ problems.”


The Globe ran extensive stories on citizens’ issues and, in a long-running series, featured a specific question from a citizen, the candidates’ response, and the citizen’s analysis of whether the candidates had answered the question. It also published critiques by individual citizens of campaign ads.


WBUR regularly broadcast voices from the focus groups, news stories on crime in neighborhoods and candidate reaction. WBUR produced talk shows with local experts and community leaders fielding calls.


At forums in late summer, panels of five citizens directly questioned candidates for senator and governor, with live news coverage by all the media partners. Then in late October, the Globe helped sponsor a debate between the gubernatorial candidates and two debates between Sen. Edward M. Kennedy and his challenger Mitt Romney. Journalists did the questioning at the first debate but citizens were the questioners in the second.




SAN FRANCISCO, CALIF.

The “Voice of the Voter” project teamed the San Francisco Chronicle, KQED-FM and KRON-TV in election coverage. For the primary election, the partners polled citizens on the issues in the governor’s race. Citizen questions and comments were solicited on fax, voice mail and e-mail systems. The poll results became the foundation for stories on the issues.


In a typical pre-primary week, the Chronicle launched a major story on each issue, KQED broadcast pieces during the day and KRON covered the same theme on television that night. The next day, KQED would do a radio forum on the issue with phone lines open for call-ins. A weekly print and broadcast “Candidates Column” allowed citizens to question candidates directly. Late in the primary campaign, they all sponsored a gubernatorial debate.


As the general election approached, the Chronicle pushed the candidates to offer specific solutions to problems. The newspaper also emphasized voter registration, distributing for the first time in late September an application form for voter registration.



SEATTLE, WASH.
“The Front Porch Forum” teamed the Seattle Times with KUOW-FM and Tacoma’s KPLU. To tap into citizen concerns, the partners conducted four focus groups, then followed up with polling. The Times and its partners openly invited the public to take part. The six issues uppermost in citizens’ minds were growth, crime and personal safety, health care, affordable housing, education and financial security. Before the September primary, the paper did major articles on each issue, followed by callbacks to poll respondents to get questions for the candidates.




DALLAS, TEX.
“Texans Talk: The People’s Agenda” was an election initiative in which the Dallas Morning News and KERA-FM sponsored a series of public forums and candidate debates. The monthly forums were based on issues identified in an extensive newspaper poll in the spring. Questions from citizens interviewed were forwarded directly to the candidates for response. And rather than have the candidates make opening and closing statements, citizens at the forums made a closing statement to tell the candidates what they wanted from them. In the fall, KERA-TV helped sponsor a candidates’ debate with significant citizen involvement.



WICHITA, KAN.
The Wichita Eagle teamed with public radio KMUW-FM in a “Your Vote Counts” election project, in which the media conducted a statewide poll on issues followed by several citizens forums. The first was on crime, the issue cited by the poll as the state’s most important problem. Others dealt with jobs and the economy. Since the August primary, the Eagle has run a series, “Solving It Ourselves,” that involved going back and re-interviewing people who participated in the initial poll on possible solutions.