A forum on local election coverage was held at The Press Club at The University Club of Grand Rapids with about 45 people in attendance, many of which included staff from the local news outlets. Kevin Murphy with WYCE moderated the panel which consisted of the news directors from the 3 Grand Rapids-based TV stations, Ed Golder with the Grand Rapids Press, Fred Martino with WGVU and Rob St. Mary with WOOD radio/Clear Channel. The format was a series of questions posed by the moderator with each panelist having up to 2 minutes to respond. There was time for only 9 questions, six by the moderator and 3 by the audience. In addition to the following summary, we have also provided an audio file of the forum.

A good question for readers to ask themselves is why none of the minority owned papers was invited, people from the independent media, nor the Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy (GRIID), which monitored local election coverage from January 15 through Election Day of 2006. Providing some data on the amount of coverage, the type of coverage and the content of coverage would have provided a good framework for seriously discussing election coverage. Instead of a healthy dialogue, panelists made broad statements and claims that the moderator did not challenge and more often than not panelists ended up agreeing with each other on most of the points made.

The first question asked was how did each of the news outlets assess their overall election coverage? Tim Dye with WXMI 17 said that their "coverage was about depth especially with the Granholm/DeVos race," and Patti McGettigan from WOOD TV 8 said "one of the things we did best was Claim Checks," their critiques of paid political ads. She added that unfortunately "because of the volume of ads we couldn't keep up." She also made the statement "If you look at the ratings, people don't get interested until just a few weeks before the election" with no supporting evidence. Rob St. Mary of WOOD radio/Clear Channel said that they used their website to provide more information than was "allowed" on air, a point that most of the panelists echoed. Ed Golder from the Grand Rapids Press said, "the web has changed a great deal of how we do reporting. We have become wire reporters," but felt that "we did a good job about looking at the big picture." Fred Martino with WGVU radio said, "outside of daily newscasts, we tried to provide in depth programs, such as our statewide 60 minute call in on Proposal 2. This was very well received. We also did a series of 30 minute interviews with candidates, which we felt was more important than the 30-second sound bite." Lastly, Tim Geraghty from WZZM 13 said, "planning was critical to our success. We listened to our customers, whether from the TV or web and what were the issues of concern for them."

The second question was considering the rise of blogging and things like YouTube, how did technology change the way candidates campaigned and how you did coverage? Most of the panelists did not think it made much of an impact. Fred Matino made the comment that "Blogs don't compete or complement us, but they help give us feedback on what people are thinking." Patti McGettigan made the observation that "candidates used the Internet quite effectively... it is a change we must embrace and we need to figure out what ways it makes us better. I also think we will see a growth to citizen journalism."

The third question asked, "How much of a role do news organizations have in responding to ads and the tone set by candidates?" Tim Dye made the point "typically it is what the community is interested in that drives coverage, if an ad makes an impact with the community, we may report on that. We don't let dictate how we report." WZZM 13 made a similar comment by stating "We tried to set the agenda based upon what our customers were telling us." Ed Golder with the Press said that it is a dance between candidates and the media. He gave as an example a claim made by Granholm in the first debate about Altera, which resulted in the Press doing 4 days of reporting on that matter. Fred Martino observed that claim checks of political ads are important and cited the huge impact that the Swift Boat ads had in 2004.

Question number four asked what role the news outlets play in raising issues, even if the candidates are not talking about them. Here the responses were more ambivalent. Channel 13 again said it was about what their customers wanted and WOOD radio said it was about what audiences wanted. Ed Golder said the editor might ask, "who is raising the issue, and if we are, is that a good enough reason?" Fred Martino was more to the point in saying "if the question is newsworthy, you ask it."

The fifth question was "being that this is a GOP area, with DeVos a local guy, were there ethical debates had in your newsroom?" Some of the panelists said they get calls from people saying they are too liberal or too conservative, so that is an indication that they are balanced. Tim Dye said, "if candidates are here we are going to ask the questions, regardless of where they are from or party affiliation," and Patti McGettigan said that "you have to make sure you have multiple voices from different perspectives as a way of avoiding bias." Tim Geraghty with WZZM said "we all bring personal biases into the mix, which is why we need to have those newsroom discussions to work out those personal biases."

The last question asked by the moderator asked the panelists to share one thing they did well and one thing they did poorly. WZZM 13 said, "local races don't get much coverage, but it is what we did best. We need more feedback from the public about what they think and will spend more time around that." The Press said, "we were proud of local races coverage, with lots of web info. We can always do better on policy and less on politics, and we also need to be in contact more with voters." WOOD radio mentioned that, "the best things that we did was Governor's race and Proposal 2, the conventions and post-debates, and public commentary. We need to do more to patch into local races." WOOD TV 8 said, "we could do more with depth in all races like we did in the Governor's race. We also need to do more of the claim checks." Lastly, WXMI 17 said "our depth was good, with long form interviews about what was relevant in our area. We need to do more with the local level, but covering 12 counties makes it difficult."

Two of the audience questions were repeats of the moderator questions around the Internet and what drives coverage. This reporter asked the question of how much does polling influence coverage and how reliable is the polling data provided? WZZM 13 said. "I think people tell pollsters what they want to hear, not what they were going to do at the voting booth." WGVU said "even if polling shows no big support for 3rd party candidates, we should not dismiss those candidates. We interviewed them as well, even though they were not getting good poll numbers." The Press commented, "we use polling to find out what are the issues people care about. I don't need polls to tell me what races are competitive. When political parties get serious about candidates and races, we get serious." WOOD TV said, "they are one element of your coverage, a snapshot in time. They do create the drama that people want. People want to know "is my team going to the Super Bowl?"