by Michael R. Fancher
Seattle Times executive editor
The Front Porch Forum is back, bulked up and ready to take on the forces of politics as usual.
It's back, starting with today's front-page story about the mood of Washingtonians in this important political year. There are some real surprises that emerged from our most recent survey of state residents. We'll be exploring the findings over the next several weeks in The Times.
It's bulked up in that a new partner, KCTS-TV (Channel 9), has joined the venture. But, it's also bulked up in that we will give readers more information and resources than ever before on which to base their votes.
It's ready to take on politics as usual by finding new ways to engage citizens with candidates and campaigns and by continuing to re-think the role of reporting in the electoral process.
The Forum was created in 1994 as a reporting partnership of The Times and National Public Radio stations KUOW-FM (94.9) and KPLU-FM (88.5). Its underlying premise was that citizens felt disconnected from government and politics, and traditional news reporting wasn't helping to connect them.
Its aim is clear: "The mission of the Front Porch Forum is to strengthen our community through news coverage that focuses on citizens' concerns, encourages civic participation, improves public deliberation and reconnects reporters, citizens and candidates to community life."
During its first year, the Forum focused on taking reporters out of the loop and linking the public directly to the candidates. It worked in that candidates were asked a lot of questions they might not have faced otherwise. It suffered to the extent that taking reporters out of the loop may have let the candidates off too easily.
This year, we're searching for a different blend. The questions again will flow from the real-world concerns of citizens, but more of the questioning will be done by trained reporters, rather than the voters themselves.
To be honest, the feedback we got from candidates and our own sense of the situation in 1994 was that citizens are a little in awe of candidates when they meet face to face. Too often, candidates ducked excellent questions and weren't pushed for better answers.
So, we'll be pushing and probing harder this time around. We'll do more reporting to compare what candidates say they will do to what they have done in the past. And, we'll be providing more information on campaign financing.
Much of our focus will be on the race for governor, given that the field is wide open. We hope to stage several major events before and after the primary election. While plans aren't firm, we hope to get beyond the traditional debate format to allow more direct voter involvement with the candidates.
Having KCTS in the mix will create even more visibility for those events, which is a key goal this year. We learned in 1994 that everything we do to generate thoughtful discourse can be blown away if a campaign spends enough money to "burn in" its own message, which often is mudslinging that turns off voters and says little about what a candidate will do if elected.
Hoping to connect better with citizens, we've consolidated communications setups. You can communicate to all the partners by phone at 206-464-3340; by fax at 206-464-2261, and by the Internet at porch@seatimes.com
You can even mail a letter to Front Porch Forum, The Seattle Times, P.O. Box 70, Seattle, WA, 98111.
The Forum partnership is not a media monolith. Its value is in letting us pool resources and utilize different communication forms to open the electoral process more than any one of the news organizations could alone.
From there, each partner is free to do its own reporting. So, for example, a poll like the one in today's Times is a resource available to all of us, but it will be utilized differently by each of us.
And, if you think the citizens' responses to the survey are interesting, wait until you see how various candidates for governor answered the same questions. We'll be reporting that sometime soon.