Online Political Coverage: Communities Matter More than Elections

View of downtown L.A. from my hotel window. This town looks better at night.

I'm in Los Angeles right now, where on Thursday I'll be giving a session at a Knight New Media Center seminar on Election '08: Covering Politics in Cyberspace.

My session is called: "Tools of Engagement:  It's a Conversation, Stupid." No, I didn't come up with that title, but I really like it. My audience will be a mix of journalists, online-media pros, geeks, and political experts. I hope they're ready to talk, because I don't really do lectures; I start conversations.

I'll admit, in my journalistic work I've generally avoided covering elections -- for good reason. Generally, the way most news orgs handle that assignment bugs the hell out of me.  The press conferences, the pundits, the posturing, the race metaphors... in all that, communities, issues, and the real workings of government tend to get pushed into the background. It feels fake and even counterproductive to me. I'm tired of it, and for the most part I tune it out.

That's not to say I tune out politics. On the contrary, I follow certain aspects of politics very closely: local, state, national, and international. And I do note how elections affect the politics that interest or affect me. However, I don't believe elections should garner the lion's share of political coverage.

It seems to me that the best political coverage is ongoing, not cyclical. Ideally, coverage of elections or other political events should support and enhance the public conversation about issues and communities.

To accomplish this with online political coverage, I think we need to get our priorities straight. Here are some thoughts on how we might do that, so we might collectively avoid turning the 2008 election season into a complete three-ring circus...

PUT PEOPLE FIRST

1. Feature public conversation. Do offer online discussion forums, but don't relegate them to sideshow status. Instead, use those discussions to shape what you'll cover and how you cover it. You can do this with message boards or e-mail lists, but even blogs that allow comments can do the trick. (Example, although it's not always about politics: Radio Open Source) Synthesize and prominently feature the very best contributions from your public conversation.
   
   
2. Cultivate a team of core contributors representing all of the major facets of your community, and as many of the minor ones as you can lure in. Look for enthusiasm and a constructive attitude -- that's far more important than online skills, which anyone can learn. People who can engage in civil disagreement are especially valuable.
   
   
3. Bring in the players. For each issue of political importance, try to get the major players involved. Look for people who are both willing to converse openly, and who actually know what they're talking about. Let them state their views and participate in your forums. Just make it clear that the point is conversation, not soapboxing. Don't just go for the big names -- look on the front lines of communities, advocacy groups, researcher organizations, and government. Link to their bios from each posting, so the community can have the context about their role and agenda.
   
   
4. Start right now. Even if you don't have your site together yet, start cultivating your team of core contributors now. In my experience, it takes a lot of time to grow a good online community -- you can't just assume that if you build the site, they will come and give you what you want.
   
   
5. Facetime. Engage your core contributors face-to-face and via phone and private e-mail, even before bringing them onto the public forum. Give them a sense of being part of the team, of being valued and welcome. Invite them to your office or a public venue for a group meeting to encourage camaraderie.
   
   
6. Guide, but don't control. News orgs are used to the publishing model of communication. Engaging a community in public conversation is equally important, but different. Encourage contributors to be constructive, but don't dictate what they should say or how they should say it -- aside from being civil and avoiding libel or misinformation, of course. Feel free to toss out topics for consideration and discussion, but always bow to the community's will about what they want to discuss. Their view really does matter, even when it differs from how you'd handle coverage from a newsroom (and it will).
   
   
7. Make issues easy to follow across multiple blog posts, discussion threads, or wiki articles. Institute a tagging system or other metadata strategy (whether for your use only or by the community) that will allow you to turn up everything related to, say, homeless shelters or ethanol subsidies. Make it possible for people to subscribe to feeds or e-mail alerts based on both search queries or tags. Timelines and backgrounders help, too.

...OK, that's enough for now. What do you think of these ideas?

Next I'll be posting a slew of tools-related links I may want to reference in my talk. Stay tuned.