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Making Sense Of The Media

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By MARY LYNN F. JONES Presstime Magazine

The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 27, 2008

Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism ( www.journalism.org), recently spoke to Presstime Magazine about whether the presidential candidates or the media are controlling the campaign message, the increasing importance of political blogs and why The Daily Show is good news for newspapers.

Q: What were the major narratives for candidates during the primary campaign?

A: The specific narratives about Sen. Barack Obama D-Ill. were whether he really is a candidate of change and a new way of politics. The second most prominent narrative about him was that he is a candidate of unusual charisma.

For Sen. John McCain R-Ariz., the primary narrative was that it's not clear he is a trusted or reliable conservative. Fully half of the assertions about him personally raised that question. The second most prominent one was that he is an admirable character.

Q: Does this suggest that candidates are succeeding in leading the media with their message, or that the media are forming their own conclusions about the candidates?

A: My sense is that the candidates are pressing more of the narrative this year than in the past. We see that in the fact that you're hearing the candidates themselves in an unadulterated way for longer periods of time. The fact that we've had so many debates has allowed that to happen. On primary nights, you often will see the victory and concession speeches in their entirety. That was not true four years ago or eight years ago.

Q: Are newspapers and their Web sites devoting more space to campaign coverage?

A: The campaign plays well to the Internet for newspapers. Campaign blogs have become a potent way of covering the race. The campaigns are extremely responsive to these newspaper blogs. Political reporters who have real knowledge and experience, especially in print, are able to cover more things more quickly and often interpret things with an informality that they're not able to in the newspaper.

In May, there was a whole story of Sen. Hillary Clinton's D-N.Y. comments about the assassination of Robert Kennedy. That morning in The New York Times, Kit Seelye had a news story about it. Online, in The Caucus, which is the political blog of The New York Times, she had essentially a minute-by-minute deconstruction of how that story became a big story. That was the thing getting e-mailed around.

Q: As newspapers look to the general election this fall, what are some of the lessons they should take from the last few election cycles?

A: The fact that we've heard the candidates a lot themselves, that the candidates' message is getting out with somewhat less filtering, especially on television, is a response to the idea that people want to get a sense of the candidates directly. They don't want the press to be in the way. They want it to be a conduit but not necessarily always a filter. That brings with it risks. It's easier if you're just reporting what the candidates are saying to get spun.

Q: Do readers still need some sugar to help the medicine go down in terms of learning about complicated issues, such as a candidate's health care plan?

A: One of the complaints was that reporters would say, well, we did that early on when we were trying to introduce the candidates before the race got hot and heavy, and no one was paying attention. The Internet allows that core coverage to not disappear. It's easily findable online, you can organize it, you can update it, you can have different ways of interacting with it.

Nonetheless, trying to balance the horse race and other coverage remains a challenge in all media, and newspapers are no exception. The studies we've done this year suggest that even in 2007 more than 60 percent of the coverage was basically about horse race tactics, strategy and these sorts of strictly political matters. Coverage of people's public records was quite small, and policy issues paled in comparison to the hardball tactical coverage that political reporters are so good at.

Q: You studied The Daily Show recently. In this new world where we get news from so many different sources, what constitutes news?

A: What we found when we looked at The Daily Show is that rather than a replacement of the news, it seemed to us to be a complement, because you really couldn't get the jokes if you weren't already aware of the news.

Q: What advice do you have for newspapers in these changing times?

A: A year ago, Barack Obama and John McCain were not predicted to be the front-runners in their two parties. Americans have decided this race, not the media. That's a good thing. It also suggests that something's going on in this country, that this election is a great conversation about the future. All of that is good news for newspapers because it plays into their strengths, and it plays into the idea that Americans need journalists to help them make sense of these things.

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