Seven people face Senator Arlen Specter in a polite half-circle of chairs in a meeting room at the University of New Hampshire. They include a nurse, an electrical engineer, a retired cooperative extension educator, a college student, and a secretary. For an hour and a half they ask the candidate from Pennsylvania about the economy, education, health care, abortion, and taxes, while, beyond the circle, a half-dozen reporters, a professional p.r. person, and a handful of others watch. After the discussion, the reporters crowd around the questioners -- not the candidate.

This was the first in a series of citizen/candidate forums organized, not by the League of Women Voters or any other traditional civic organization, but by a consortium of New Hampshire media. Voters' Voice -- made up of the New Hampshire Associated Press, New Hampshire public radio and public television, and The Telegraph of Nashua -- was formed to refocus coverage of the first-in-the-nation presidential primary on a voters' agenda rather than one set by the media and campaign strategists.

"Many of us have been disgusted for years with press coverage of political campaigns, feeling it didn't do a very good job of providing voters with what they need to know," says Joe Magruder, news editor for The Associated Press's Northern New England bureau in Concord.

Voters' Voice is one of six projects partially funded by the Citizens Election Project of the Washington, D.C.-based Pew Center for Civic Journalism. The other five -- in California, Florida, Boston, and two in Iowa -- also involve both print and broadcast media. The project's executive director, Stanley Cloud, a former Washington bureau chief for Time magazine, declined to say how much money was involved in the overall program, but Erik Nycklemoe, program director of New Hampshire Public Radio, confirmed that the New Hampshire project received $22,000 from the Citizen's Election Project for polling and a part-time coordinator. In addition, the project gave New Hampshire Public Radio another $13,000 to expand its election coverage. It also provides Voters' Voice with the services of the Harwood Group, to run citizen focus groups, and Neuman and Company to help with public relations. The partners put in substantial amounts of their own money as well.

Voters' Voice partners tend to shy away from calling their project "civic journalism," despite its connection with Pew (see "Are You Now, or Will You Ever Be, a Civic Journalist?" cjr, September/October). "It's a citizen-oriented journalism project," says Nycklemoe. "We're not dropping a focus on campaigns; we're adding a citizen perspective." Nick Pappas, city editor and election coverage coordinator for The Telegraph, calls it voter-driven coverage. John Wackman, executive producer of NH Public Television, sees it as a "mission" to help restore democracy. Magruder says it doesn't need a label; "it's just good journalism."

Whatever it's called, Voters' Voice and other Citizens Election Project partnerships use professional polls to determine voters' concerns and professionally run focus groups to gauge the depth of those concerns. Voters' Voice also analyzes the campaign materials to produce "apples-to-apples" comparisons of top candidates' stands on issues. In addition to several candidate forums, involving people who had been contacted during the poll, the project is hosting a series of call-in TV and radio broadcasts with candidates. More important, every part of the project so far has received in-depth, well-played coverage by the Voters' Voice members. In the case of the AP, many of these project-generated stories have run on the "A," or top national, wire.

Changing the mindset of editors and reporters about campaign coverage -- getting them to break old habits -- is the most important and toughest part of the project, according to Magruder and other partners. "All journalists have very weak will when it comes to resisting temptation of the horse-race poll, the attack by candidate A against candidate B, the insider stuff," says Magruder. His goal for Voters' Voice is to make "good stories" -- those focusing on issues voters said they care about -- a bigger piece of the coverage pie, with less emphasis on "bad stories" -- those on the workings of the campaigns, the popularity polls, the pundit-quoting assessments, and the mudslinging.

For instance, the AP passed on covering Phil Gramm's criticism of use of out-of-state volunteers for a big Dole campaign leafleting last fall. Instead, it had one reporter out talking with residents of nursing homes about Medicare and another working on a story about college-age voters.

But each partner covers the primary as it sees fit. "I've always liked the strategy stories -- reading them and assigning them," says The Telegraph's Pappas. "If we go to a news conference and a candidate whacks the other one up the side of his head for twenty minutes, we're going to cover it and give it reasonable play."

But how "reasonable play" is defined might be changing, Pappas says. Such a story might end up in political briefs rather than on the front page.

cjr  |  archive  |  resources  |  contact  |  search  |  subscribe