High Costs Hurting Political News Coverage?


Posted: August 26th, 2008 | By: Steve Mullen | Filed under: Media News, Social Media News, Social Media Opinion | No Comments

An item in U.S. News & World Report’s Washington Whispers column is raising some eyebrows and causing quite a bit of talk.

Rocked by warnings that it will cost news organizations $50,000 more per reporter to cover Sen. Barack Obama or Sen. John McCain, a growing number of journalists and press pundits are questioning why the media is staffing up coverage of the political conventions where little major news is expected. At least one paper and several Washington bureaus, we’re told, have budgeted only $100,000 for political coverage, and their convention teams will eat most of it, leaving little to put reporters on the campaign trail. Mark Potts, a media consultant who blogs about the industry on RecoveringJournalist.com, goes further: Leave the campaign coverage to the big shots, like AP, and spend that money at home. “That $50,000 would go a long way toward paying the annual salary for another reporter to cover something readers really care about, like city hall, or local schools.”

The resulting discussion (one example can be found at The Daily Kos) comes from many news blogs using this to further their case that bloggers can report the news much more efficiently than the traditional print news organizations.  While this is likely true, the problem with this discussion is that this Whispers item is not terribly clear.  Is that $50,000 figure the cost per reporter to cover one of the conventions, or is it the cost per reporter to cover an entire campaign?  I agree that the number is high, but there’s a vast difference between racking up a $50K bill in five days versus more than a year.

That aside, bloggers CAN cover the convention much less expensively than a traditional media outlet, particularly when you look at the traditional media outlet literally eating $100,000 worth of budget.  One great example of economical coverage comes from the blog Pam’s House Blend, which is fully credentialed for the Democratic Party Convention and is funding the trip through donations from readers.

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