For all of you editors and news directors out there who have decided the future is spelled l-o-c-a-l, here’s the story you should jump on right away:
The 2008 presidential election.
Excuse me, you say? The presidential election?
Absolutely. If you’re serious about local coverage, you should be working on this election story right now.
But why, you ask, should I devote precious (and, in some cases, vanishing) resources on coverage of a national story? Isn’t that what I pay AP and those national syndicates to do?
AP and the other national press will do their part — but not your part.
You should cover this story because it is, for your readers, the most important national election in years. And no one — not the AP, not The New York Times, not NPR and not the national broadcast and cable networks — will cover this election with the same understanding of the local needs and concerns that your staff possesses.
This is, in fact, a terrific opportunity for you to demonstrate what it means to be local — to show your readers and viewers just how connected you are to their lives.
Take health care reform, for example: Reporters based in Washington and New York will produce many insightful stories about the candidates’ various proposals to provide health care to all Americans. But only your staff in Albany, Ga., can address the questions of local small-business owners, struggling to afford insurance premiums. Only your staff in El Paso can analyze the impact of a single-payer system on your local hospitals. Only your staff in Cleveland can examine whether a public-private health insurance system will help or hurt the city’s efforts to woo new businesses and jobs.
And how about the immigration issue? Don’t residents of Pennsylvania and New Mexico have very different questions about the impact of reform on their communities? Couldn’t you help them make a better decision about which candidate to support by putting the debate in the context of your home market?
I’m not suggesting that every newsroom in America go on the presidential campaign trail for the next 16 months. But every newsroom serious about serving local readers and viewers should be planning stories and Web features designed to help its audience participate actively and intelligently in this election.
Recently, a number of us from Poynter joined with members of the Drake University faculty to hold a conference for print and broadcast reporters on how to cover the Iowa caucuses. The very first event of the conference — a conversation among Des Moines residents with a former Iowa governor, a former presidential campaign consultant, a pollster and the local newspaper editor — reminded me just how local a story this campaign is.
Yes, the public said, they cared about Iraq. But they said they needed to know more about how services for local veterans, tax policy and health care reform affected Iowans. Again and again, they told the local newspaper editor they were depending on her paper to answer their questions, tell them about all the candidates, let them make their own decisions.
They didn’t mention The New York Times.
Those ideas represent a start. Along the way, develop a detailed coverage plan to help maintain your commitment to this project. With each story you do, you’ll not only improve the public’s ability to participate in this election, you’ll further demonstrate to your newsroom that for the people we serve, “local” means more than geography. It’s a state of mind. On some days, we’re focused on county water usage; on other days, we’re thinking about the impact of the Chinese economy on our local industry.
As the late House Speaker Tip O’Neill once said, “All politics is local.” This election is your story — no matter where you live.
