The Walter Cronkite School and the Arizona Republic will host an event for members of the public and journalists to discuss political issues that directly affect them.
The event, entitled “Politics and the Press”, will take place on Feb. 1. The first in the Community Conversations series, the event will allow the public to experience a behind-the-scenes look at covering politics. Tickets will cost $150.
Kristin Gilger, associate dean for the Cronkite School, organized the event with Arizona Republic Executive Editor Nicole Carroll.
“We constantly hear from our viewers that they would like to interact more with our staffers about topics they care about,” Carroll said. “So we thought this would be a convenient way and a meaningful way to connect the public with some of our experts.”
The profit from the event, after expenses, will go toward education and training of student professional journalists. Gilger said the Arizona Republic and Cronkite School want to help student journalists participate in a meaningful way in a professional setting.
“We are in the business of training and educating, and it is important that education and training doesn’t stop when you leave the university, that you still have opportunities in development and training,” Gilger said.
Community Conversations will be an all-day event, starting at 8 a.m. and ending at 5:30 p.m. Robert Robb, an Arizona Republic editorial writer, will host the event.
The event will open with an interview with Weil Family Professor Leonard Downie, Jr., the former editor of the Washington Post, conducted by Christopher Callahan, dean of the Walter Cronkite School and vice provost for the Downtown campus. Downie said that he will focus on how investigative reporting coverage on candidates and political money flow has improved greatly.
“Political coverage has evolved a lot in the last quarter century and continues to evolve,” Downie said. “I would hope the conference accomplishes helping people better understand how political coverage works and focusing attention on the things that are working well and the things that need to be improved.”
The group will then venture to the Arizona Republic building to watch a taping of “Sunday Square Off” with 12 News anchor Brahm Resnik.
“It will be interesting and (Resnik) will spend some time talking to the group about how this works, the behind-the-scenes of putting on a program like ‘Sunday Square Off,’” Gilger said.
Afterward, Robb will interview former Arizona Senator Jon Kyl. Gilger said that there would be little partisanship because Kyl is not currently in office.
Kyl will not be the only recognizable name. Washington bureau chief of USA Today Susan Page will talk about current political coverage, followed by a panel with political cartoonist Steve Benson and Arizona Republic columnists E.J. Montini and Laurie Roberts.
“You are looking for people the community will recognize or who have provoked authority in the subject,” Gilger said.
The event is geared toward helping the public understand political media coverage and improve it based on public concerns.
“This is a way to bridge that, to hear firsthand from the people that do the covering and the people who get covered and advance that issue,” Gilger said.
Generally public misunderstanding of coverage stems from the public perception of media and politics, Gilger said.
“Clearly public discourse has become more partisan and there is a distrust of the media when it comes to covering politics,” she said. “If you look at the Pew studies and the confidence that the American public has in journalists, they trust journalists as they trust lawyers, so there is a disconnect.”
Downie said public opinion is split.
“Part of the public is disconnected from it and they don’t vote. On the other hand, people who are active in politics are being more active than ever before,” Downie said.
The next Community Conversations event will take place on March 1, and will focus on sports reporting. The series may continue depending on how successful the first two events are.
“This is an experiment. This is the first one we are doing at this level but if it works, and we hope that it works, then we hope to do more on topics that are important to the Phoenix area,” Carroll said.
Contact the reporter at aimackli@asu.edu
