 About the Series:
About a year ago, the KPLU news team met to discuss how we would cover the key issues of the 2008 Presidential election. In that meeting over coffee and bagels I exclaimed with some exasperation, "Don’t we talk about these same issues every four years?” The frustration gave birth to an idea: Let’s research our topics using ever-more available archival sound of past U.S. Presidents to see if we could bring a deeper level of understanding of the issues our country faces today. The idea of bringing back the voices of the past to compare with what’s being said by our top presidential candidates in 2008 was exciting to us -- but something was still missing. As we talked, we wondered how those past Presidents would be perceived by today’s voters. And then I said, "Why don’t we find out?”
From there, we fleshed out the the idea of bringing in a group of people ("Roundtable Conversations”) for each of our stories to listen and react to tape. The result is KPLU’s Election ’08 series "Looking Back To Look Forward.” What’s missing in these stories is tape from experts – historians, political analysts, etc. But don’t think we didn’t talk to them! Months of research went into each story. The reporters spent a lot of their time reading and talking to those with deep knowledge about presidential history and the history of story topics such as health care and the economy, among other things.
Roundtable Conversations
To incorporate the public’s voice, we invited 55 people into the KPLU Seattle studios who had an interest in politics and in one of the series’ subjects. KPLU reporters played tape of past Presidents and the current candidates and that then led to a 90-minute roundtable discussion that helped frame the stories.
Our invitees represented as diverse a group as we could find and their political views came from across the spectrum. We hosted college students, tech workers, veterans, scientists, educators, bankers, a full-time homemaker, a pastor, a playwright, a musician and a chef. They came mostly from King and Pierce counties but we also attracted a business owner from Sequim and another from Walla Walla. (Our "roundtablers” are featured on each story home page.) We are deeply grateful to all those who participated. They gave their time and energy to this project and endured some high temperatures as our studio air conditioning sputtered during the hot days of summer.
The ’08 Election Series Team
Thank you to the reporters who put in so much time researching and gathering tape for this project.
Austin Jenkins – Political rhetoric
Gary Davis – Health care
Bellamy Pailthorp - Economy and War
Chana Joffe-Walt – The identity politics of the Presidents
Keith Seinfeld – Science & technology
Jennifer Wing – Immigration
Liam Moriarty – Environment
Paula Wissel – Social safety nets
Thank you to our Project Coordinator/Interactive Media Manager, Florangela Davila, who set up all the "Conversation Roundtables,” produced our multimedia slide shows for three of our topics: economy, health care and identity politics of the President, and worked closely with our Web Manager, Craig Coovert, to design and build our series web pages. Florangela came to us as a seasoned reporter from The Seattle Times. Her journalistic excellence and her willingness to expand from print to multimedia made her a superb leader on this project.
Photography
With this multimedia approach to storytelling, photography plays a big role. We couldn’t have done it without great images from The Associated Press, the Museum of History and Industry (MOHAI), Florangela Davila, and flickr.
Special Thanks
A big thanks to KPLU’s Program Director, Joey Cohn, and our General Manager, Paul Stankavich, who got excited about this project right from the start and have supported us every step of the way.
And speaking of support, we couldn’t have done this project without the generous financial support of The Norcliffe Foundation. A grant allowed us to pay for the necessary resources we needed to accomplish this endeavor. Thank you for believing in us!
Erin Hennessey
KPLU News Director and "Looking Back to Look Forward” editor
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