I think events like the one last night area good start-- they need to see that readers are frustrated by the lack of responsibility shown.

Also, blogging. Blogging guilts the press in to covering the news that they should have been writing about the whole time but were too busy reprinting poll statistics to actually look in to.

I thought the discussion was great - great job moderating and really good people picked to be on the panel. Blogging is a nice help, but it's nothing more than a tool.

The bottom line is that t's very hard for progressive organizations to target media, because everyone fears retaliation. The fear is that the coverage goes away, then the funding, and then your organization disappears.

I've been in enough meetings where competent organizers and advocates (not total fruitbats) are very frustrated with coverage - but they can't voice that frustration because we're all afraid.

I'd personally love to organize a series of protests outside the times' offices to get them to improve their coverage (which btw I think has really improved locally over the years). But I'm afraid to do it, because the journalists will all close ranks.

The problem goes back to the way we organize as progressives: we're too reliant on media and not reliant enough on organizers motivating a network of volunteers who are issue-centric.

Funders don't fund organizers, because the marginal short term results you get from organizing are always less than the what you get from a communications person pitching to media. But in the long run, it means you get overly reliant on media, and don't have a network of actual people behind you to back you up.

That's why I'm so impressed with groups like Make the Road, who try to do both. And with the relatively few unions who are actually trying to involve their membership base in a serious way.

Until funders start caring about actual organizing, which takes a long, long time and a lot of energy from paid staff sticking it out for the long haul, we are going to continue to be in big trouble.

I'd like to see the big donors put their money where their mouths are: do organizing and not another bullshit over-funded consultant-a-thon. Once we've got more bodies, we won't be so afraid to confront the media.

the real story behind the 2005 politcal coverage...

you had one candidate who had a dream like position and another candidate who couldn't make more mistakes dealing with the press. it was depressing to see the forumers chat at noisome about the mayors race. this isn't was solely about the mayors race, but about the nature of the media in democracy. DMI... next time, let's talk about the bigger picture!

granted democracy isn't sexy, but reporters need to engage the public. Patrick Healy hit the nail on the head stating "the press didn't find enough creative ways to cover the 2005 races." in one of the most media soaked markets in the country, candidates need to be smart about standing above the fold and the media needs to actively engage society. maybe Ben Smith was right that "maybe the press can scare people into paying attention." hell the press does a good job about telling us that it's time to buy more duck tape and to stock up on veraflu.

but in the end it comes down to apathy. we are all too concerned about the next paycheck, bill, report card, party, date, play, or terror threat to see that our vote matters.

Maybe I am coming at this differently having worked as a burned ex-organizer but I do not think that most grassroots groups have anyone doing their press work. Or at least not competently. They hire a lot of storm troopers like me to come in and organize but they don't understand the role communications play in telegraphing our work, giving us the tools to spread the word and hold politicians accountable.

The messaging then comes out overly earnest and the press either ignores or belittles us or ignores and belittles us.

I agree with you about the b.s. over-funded consultant-a-thons in the cases where groups do hire them. But my problem is not because they are putting resources in to it, but because the people they hire don't get either what we do or they are just too old school to know how to work it in the new media world and they do everything like its the 80's.

No matter what happens we always look flat-footed.

Ideally the press would believe in doing research and stuff.
And maybe large membership organizations are messing things up the way you describe Pete but grassroots groups, small unions and campaigns don't understand communications.

And this is an organizer saying it.

And you are 100% about us fearing the media retaliating for our criticism. But what do we do instead of trembling in fear? This is so hard for 501c3s.

I do agree. The Drum Major Institute was dragged into this race, understandably to some extent because of Freddy's role in reviving and leading DMI through December of 2004. But dragging our dispassionate analysis of things like the Annual School Report Cards into the political back-and-forth could also have been viewed as a warning shot: think twice before releasing research relevant to issues that are central to an election. I had some trouble recalling the release of any major research during the last six months of the campaign. I don't know how to get around this election-year freeze, but I do know that election years are precisely the moment in which questions about policy should be asked and answered. Perhaps it's up to the press to do the digging and researching that advocacy and research shops feel they cannot.

Noel-
Jonathan from Gotham Gazette did address the larger social responsibility issue that the other's often dodged.

As a nonprofit he clearly addresses a lot of coverage from the standpoint of his social responsibility. Ben Smith thinks that means it has to be boring. It can be boring. It doesn't have to be.

Anyway I think horserace coverage is what's boring, not real arguments over issues.

Norman Oder of the famed TimesRatnerReport blog sent his apoplgies for missing the event but wanted to direct folks attention to the question of the media's lack of coverage around the candidates roles in the Atlantic Yards development project.

One attendee last night raised that question himself.
But do check-out Oder's, indepth study of the media coverage of mayoral candidates around that issue here:

http://timesratnerreport.blogspot.com/2005/11/freddys-fumble-ferrer-mishandled.html

I think blaming the press for the uninspired coverage of the 2005 mayoral election is like blaming the American public for not watching as much baseball as they used to. Like a baseball game, the 2005 Mayoral election was slow, largely uneventful, took too long to play, and was devoid of any real hard hitting (or discussion of hard hitting issues anyway).

There were numerous opportunities to make the mayoral race into one that was compelling and worth paying attention to. That the more progressive candidate (really, his staff) failed to realize his numerous opportunities to do so is no one's fault but his own (some political professionals, like myself, were consistently dumbfounded as opportunity after opportunity went unidentified and unused).

Truth be told, I think the press wanted a better campaign to report on and, if given the chance, they would have reported a more interesting race. That being said, the press cannot responsibly create an interesting, engaged race where none exists, no matter how frustrated they may become covering the same bland election week in and week out. That they restrained themselves under those circumstances is to their credit, not a subject for criticism.

There are two sides to this whole press issue for sure. On the one hand the press got reams of paper from the Bloomberg campaign both positive about Mike and negative about Freddy on a near daily basis while many in the press will admit the opposition research on Bloomberg was barely pushed to them. On the other hand the press hyped the stories they wanted to hype (Diallo, web blog, Green's oppo research book on Freddy, Freddy's inconsistencies) but buried the stories they wanted to bury (Fuliani/Newman,IHOP "diners",Green's oppo research book on Bloomberg, the ever changing stances on the Apollo debate and other issues such as cross harbor freight tunnel, ballot access, gay marriage, taxes)

http://www.nypress.com/blog/blog.cfm?blog_id=187

Azi from NYPress's blog contacted our panelists to ask them one more question: What's The Campaign Story You Wanted To Write, But Didn't.

read it.

Actually, a couple of headlines "Ferrer does not offer detailed policy proposals" would have gone a long way, esp. from the Times. Often the absence of news is really the news.

Although Freddy's plans did have specifics on how to pay for them and this is where he was bogged down and attacked. The lesson he needed to learn from Kerry and others is if your plans are too specific then it leaves more open for attack. On the other hand Bloomberg promised things without saying how he would pay for them or stated ways that he would and where he was given a pass on these when Freddy suggested similar funding sources (state/federal) he was scoffed at.

I thought the forum was very interesting and informative, but I think it could have been better in two ways.

First, there wasn't enough audience participation. We did get to some Q&A towards the end, but I would like to have seen more of a discussion inclusive of people's opinions from the audience.

The other problem I had was that coming out of the forum, I don't feel I am any more able to help reform the media. There was a great discussion of various problems, but almost no discussion of what concerned citizens can do to fix those problems.

You raise a good point Abhiskek- but I do know that one of the things that we want to do with this open thread is talk about ways people CAN impact media coverage.

The realization that the left was failing to make its case in the media was one of the reasons I stopped participating in protest politics for a brief time after the 2000 election. It was like no matter what we did, our message couldn't be heard by the corporate media. The problem was exacerbated by the telecommunications deregulation act in the 90s and the 2000 election showed the chilling impact this law change could have on democracy.

However, finding creative ways to convey a political message, by telling a story was one solution I found to breaking through the media's filters that keep out dissent.

One of the reasons for my enthusiasm about working on the DMIblog comes from the wisdom of punk rock legend/activist Jello Biafra, a longtime proponent of the Independent Media Center who said "don't hate the media, become the media". By taking media from a one way message machine to something that can only exist through participation, blogs are already transforming how stories become news.

The problem is that not everyone has a computer and so acting like blogs are a panacea is tone deaf to the digital divide. As demonstrated by the work we do in placing op-eds in papers, pitching stories etc. the role of traditional press is still invaluable. Blogs don't replace that.

But throughout the NYC election cycle we heard people bemoaning the lack of independent group run public blogs, representing a community oriented standpoint on the elections, talking to regular New Yorkers, breaking the stories the press couldn't cover etc. Daily Gotham can be the answer to that. I urge anyone to participate.

It’s amazing how many news stories trickle-up from blogs to the mainstream media. That's something I will be discussing in our Annual Review.

Umm… thoughts?