Thread by @jayrosen_nyu

The first Tuesday in November. A year from now is the 2020 election. What model for campaign coverage will your newsroom be using? Have you decided yet? This is my THREAD for those in journalism still planning their approach. I have an alternative model for your consideration. 1/

Here I will introduce you to the "citizens agenda" style of campaign coverage, as we call it. There is still time to join a small number of newsrooms that have been experimenting with this approach. Its virtue is that it begins with the voters, rather than the race. 2/

When I call the citizens agenda a “style” of coverage I mean to place it among other styles, all of them valid ways to cover a campaign. The state-of-the-race style is the most common in the U.S. It tells voters who is winning— and tries to discern why.

https://twitter.com/peterbakernyt/status/1190686215395262464

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Also common are candidate-centric styles, like the embed system the major networks use for presidential campaigns. Likewise, the candidate profile, a staple of magazine journalism during election season, treats the people running for office as the proper object of interest. 4/

"Follow the money," a phrase made famous by the movie version of All the President's Men, is its own style of election coverage, and an increasingly important form. It seeks from fundraising and campaign spending the truest picture of how and what the candidates are doing. 5/

And of course there is the “savvy” style, also called insider coverage, where the point is to reveal the machinations, pick apart the strategy, appreciate the winning moves, and tutor the audience in how to think like a pro. This is politics as gameday show, a familiar form. 6/

You'll notice that these different styles are not really opposites of each other. Rather, they “cut in” at different points in the pageant to reveal one part of it, never the whole. The citizens agenda style cuts in at the point where voters form questions for the candidates. 7/

In practice — as against Twitter threads — your election coverage is probably going to be a mix of styles. These could include “scrambling to cover what happens with the people we have,” a kind of default or “blank” approach, waiting to be driven by events, not intentions. 8/

In the citizens agenda style you begin with a clear intention: to find out from the voters within your reach what these voters want the campaign to be about. You try to get good answers to that question, then use what you found to guide what you do in your campaign coverage. 9/

That’s it, really. Starting this way — with the voters you reach, and their right to get their concerns addressed by candidates and journalists — gives task and mission to your campaign coverage. When the media storms come you have the means ready for resisting their pull. 10/

The citizens agenda style is part of what is called “engagement journalism.” It is audience-first and public-powered, a "pivot to people." niemanlab.org/2018/12/pivot-… You could also say it starts with the demand side: what the voters you reach demand of the candidates you cover. 11/

Here are the key steps in the citizens agenda style.

Step One: Identify — especially to yourselves — the people you are trying to inform with your election coverage. Your community. Your public. Your crowd. 12/

Step Two: Ask the people you are trying to inform a simple question: what do you want the candidates to be discussing as they compete for votes?

On that question everything else in the model turns. 13/

Step Three: Keep asking!

Use every portal, platform, method or occasion you have to pose the question: "What do you want the candidates to be discussing as they compete for votes?" Text us, write us, tweet us, call and leave a message, fill out this form, come to our event. 14/

Step Four: Interpreting what you heard, and applying your knowledge as journalists, you then synthesize the results into a draft agenda, a priority list for campaign coverage that originates in an act of listening.

I know. You want to see an example. thetyee.ca/Tyeenews/2019/… 15/

Step Five: 5. Test, revise and improve the agenda with the people you made it for. “This is what we think we heard. Sound right to you?"

Ideally, polling helps you validate what you found or identify what you misheard. If that's out of reach, find other ways to test it. 16/

Six: When confidence permits, or plans require, publish the citizens agenda as a “live” product on your site.

Publishing is a key step. It commits you —openly— to a plan: use what you heard to guide what you do in election coverage. This is a kind of pact with the public. 17/

Step Seven: Let the citizens agenda instruct your campaign reporting.

Around the top priorities you can now do in-depth journalism and clear-eyed explainers, knowing that these products connect to problems that people said they care about. 18/

Step Eight: Press the candidates to address the items on the citizens agenda. When they do, tell the voters.

In a way, you “win” at election year journalism when this occurs. Instead of just covering what happens willy-nilly, you have provided a demonstrable public service. 19/

Step Nine: 9. Build your voters guide around the citizens agenda.

Down the left side of the grid, the candidates for office. Across the top, the items on the citizens agenda. Fill in the grid with what the candidates have done, said, or proposed. That’s public service. 20/

Step Ten: Keep listening for revisions to the agenda until the campaign ends.

I called it a published product. I also said it was live. That means you have to change it when the ground shifts, or the choices narrow, or something happens to alter people's expectations. 21/

Here are those ten steps written down and explained in more detail: pressthink.org/2019/06/key-st… Here is a case study of how it worked at a small news site in Dublin: medium.com/@azirulnick/ca… 22/

My caution about 2020: You cannot keep from getting sucked into Trump’s agenda without a firm grasp on your own. But where does that agenda come from? It can’t come from the journalists. Who cares what they think? It has to originate with the voters you are trying to inform. 23/

Learn more about the citizens agenda style and how it works at thecitizensagenda.org That site is a collaboration among @wearehearken @TrustingNews and @membershippzzle. We're teaming up because we cannot sit by and watch election coverage repeat its patterns. 24/

Finally, here are some other reasons you might want to look into the citizens agenda:

““Election coverage the way we have always done it simply won’t cut it.”

“We’re trying to be more audience-focused. The citizens agenda is a part of that..”

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"We have to be more responsive. We have to restore connection and trust. Maybe this can help with that.”

“After the disaster of 2016 we cannot go into the field in 2020 with the same equipment. Or intention. We have to try a different way.”

Which one of those speak to you? END