Covering public affairs in a changing media environment: WashPost.com editor at Samara

Jim Brady, the former executive editor of the washingtonpost.com and the U.S. consulting editor for The Guardian, came to Samara for lunch with a number of public affairs journalists, editors and producers to discuss covering politics and public affairs in a changing media environment. His talk was wide-ranging and fascinating to producers and consumers of news alike, full of great examples and a terrific Q&A.

Unfortunately, discussion over lunch does not make for high-quality recording, however, we captured some of his main points and examples in writing, retro-style.

As we well know, a massive change took place between the 2004 and 2008 elections. In '04, every candidate, advocacy group and political party has their own website, but they weren't linked up and weren't very influential.

By the '08 election everyone had a platform and the reporter was no longer relied upon to get the message out. The Post devoted incredible resources to "cleaning up the waves of information that wash up on shore," pulling the truth out of what was hurled back-and-forth online. Reporters still spend a lot more time mining records and data, figuring out what candidates do, how they spend their time and what they did or said in the past. Whether that's good or bad remains an active and unanswered debate (more on that in a future post); for now, it is a news organization's reality.

Jim also highlighted a few experiments his team tried, pulling together wide varieties of data with interactive content to illuminate stories in new (and mostly better) ways:

• A U.S. Congress votes database (particularly useful for those midnight ones you never hear about)
• An election issue tracker that compiled the most common terms used by the candidates on the trail (NB: "Iraq War" and "healthcare" led the way for Obama)
• Behind-the-scenes election night video commentary and live discussions with newsmakers and Post writers and editors
• On the local beat, crime, school, restaurant and real estate reports (see here for a map of crime around the White House), and a Pulitzer Prize winning investigation into DC schools that includes data on all kinds of things you should know about the places your kids learn.
• The fabulous "Pearls for Breakfast," another Pulitzer Prize-winning piece featuring a world-class musician playing in the DC Metro during morning rush hour.

He also touched on a few trends that are reshaping the news business, and ways in which U.S. newspapers are facing them:

• Push your content out: Someone under 21 will rarely, if ever, mention a traditional news brands as their major source of information and simply don't think about newspapers as the starting points of their day. Instead it's combinations of Twitter, Google and Facebook, and any news organization needs to aggressively populate these sites and build relationships with the bloggers that drive traffic (e.g., Drudge), even if you detest them. The Post and the New York Times both hire communications people to do this.
• Paywall or no paywall?: Jim does not advocate a paywall for the Post's content online. Although he believes the work is high quality, much of what they do is also covered elsewhere, so he's not convinced a paywall will work. Instead, he encourages news companies to look for opportunities to pay through mobile. For example, an alert system that would notify staffers each time their boss was mentioned in the news.
• Love your readers/comments are your friends: If you can get a reader to comment, their likelihood of converting them to a core reader goes up dramatically. Live discussions similarly drive loyalty, making readers feel like they have access to big names. Readers can even do some heavy lifting, as the Guardian's MP Expenses piece showed. In short, if readers are part of your process, and you're part of their routine, you will win.

If you're working in current or public affairs journalism and interested in future events, please let us know and we'll add you to the list.