Mayoral Recall: A Media Planning Guide

With two weeks to go before the June 23, 2009 Akron election to determine if Mayor Don Plusquellic will continue in office, here's some thoughts and planning advisories.

When petitions were first delivered then certified, it was pretty clear there would be a vote this summer on the ChangeAkronNow push to recall Plusquellic. No more talking; a deadline to finally put this issue to bed.

Akron Beacon Journal Editor Bruce Winges and I had been having some conversations on issues where it might prove useful for both our respective news organizations to not only coordinate but even collaborate with a joint project. We thought the recall election was one of those issues, and agreed to try and pursue interview opportunities with both sides where our respective reporters would be able to bring multiple views to bear on the key players.

Unfortunately, things didn't quite work out that way.

Mayor Plusquellic's response to WAKR was that we publish (on AkronNewsNow) and broadcast (on WAKR) coverage of his chief opponent's tax troubles before he would accept our joint invitation. The ABJ has already reported the issue, including in a story last year, but we made an editorial decision to skip that issue. It is our view that while Warner Mendenhall's personal finances were certainly fair game for the Mayor to go off on, it wasn't our role to tee up the shot for him. We feel there's been plenty enough childish name-calling and personal attacks on both sides, a viewpoint many individuals on both sides also privately share with us. Our policy has also been exercised in the case of Plusquellic's opponents, who haven't been shy about their own attacks on the personal behavior of mayor and those close to him.

There was also a small matter of accepting conditions for an interview with the mayor, who appeared on our airwaves as a guest on the Ray Horner Morning Show on April 1st. We feel it was inappropriate to accept such conditions, and reserve the right to make up our own minds when it comes to our editorial direction and policies. We respect the right of the mayor to decide who he will talk with, but think Akron deserves more independent voices, not fewer.

Full disclosure: our parent company, through our radio stations, has a business relationship with the city, primarily in the form of a partnership to help promote events and activities such as Lock 3's summertime concerts and events. This type of relationship extends back decades; many will remember when the "WAKR Good Guys" helped promote local concerts and venues. In addition to being good business, we view this as important to our community. That said, it does not influence the editorial decisions made by our newsroom. Anyone who's been around the mayor when those deicisons come up can attest.

As of this week, the mayor's office neither accepted nor rejected the invitation. We decided to move forward. It is the mayor's right to decline our interview request, but our listeners and readers should be fully aware the offer was extended. Both WAKR and the Beacon Journal will offer up their own comprehensive stories, including separate interviews. We have agreed to promote our competing coverage, because the issues involved with the recall are simply too important for one news organization to "own" by itself.

Both of our news organizations already feature extensive coverage with easy-to-navigate special sections online through these links to the Beacon Journal and AkronNewsNow coverage. In some cases, stories date back more than six months. There are also a wealth of other online sites in Akron produced by proponents and critics of the recall, including those of the two main organizations noted below. Some are serious, some are entertaining, but all add to the general debate: what decision should Akron voters make June 23rd?

On Sunday's 1590 WAKR and AkronNewsNow.com will feature portions of what the mayor said in April in addition to a full sit-down with State Senator Tom Sawyer, heading up the anti-recall Citizens for Akron group. Our full interviews with Warner Mendenhall and Patti Longville of ChangeAkronNow will also be broadcast and available online. In addition to our on-air coverage "WAKR Primer: The 2009 Recall" to air Sunday, June 14, 2009 from 12:00 to 2:00, we will also feature repeated webcasts of the audio on our news stream WAKRNewsNow and video on AkronNewsNow. We will also include easier-to-digest podcast "chunks" of these interviews, but feel it is important to present full and complete versions as well.

The Beacon Journal will also feature extensive coverage, including in-depth interviews conducted by Stephanie Warsmith. She and other staffers at the newspaper have done a wonderful job of presenting viewpoints and issues for voters to consider, and on Sunday, June 14 it should be required reading to compare as both Plusquellic and Mendenhall make their respective cases.

On a local journalism note, there may likely be critics of the decision of the Beacon Journal and WAKR in promoting our "competition." But with local television pulling their limited resources closer to home and shrinking news budgets impacting the number of bodies covering stories despite the urgent need for news of our communities, we may be seeing even more collaborative projects in the future. Personally, I hope so; it seems we spend a lot of time worrying more about the masthead or frequency number than what matters most.

Our readers, listeners, viewers and visitors need to know what's going on more than ever.

OMG -- How This All Started

Many thanks to YouTube and my pal Tom Petner at TVSpy.com for a most welcome reminder of how what you are reading, watching and listening to now all started with the clunk of computers we would laugh at now -- and horrible waits to read scrappy text.

For old geezers such as myself this throwback to San Francisco's KRON-TV report on LBW (Life Before Web) is a knee-slapping walk down memory lane; if you are under 35, however, this slice of history may very well remind you of the silver set griping they went to school when it snowed a foot -- by walking barefoot, uphills both ways...



We've been spending the better part of the past month here at AkronNewsNow.com getting ready for our next digital media rollout...a streamed version of an Akron-centered all-news radio station but without the radio. WAKRNewsNow is a hybrid of sorts, featuring updated newscasts every hour from the Akron Radio Center via 1590 WAKR, a mix of community-centered interviews from WAKR's Ray Horner Morning Show, entertainment features from our staff including ANN Editor Ryan Haidet's Reality Check, WQMX air personality George McFly's Nashville Minute, WONE air personality Sandra Miller's Daily Buzz and plenty more.

It'll also be a prime source for live coverage of local events and stories, giving our reporters the opportunity to do longer versions of more complicated issues that don't quite fit into a six-minute newscast. It will also allow us to bring you more of the coverage you'd like to hear, such as replays of Governor Strickland's recent State of the State address or even live coverage of Mayor Plusquellic's upcoming State of the City address next month.

The idea for the all-news radio without the radio originated with our Senior VP Nick Anthony and boosted up a notch by our owner and GM Thom Mandel in recognition of the wide variety of content we produce both on-air and online. The media mantra lately has been to downplay the platform we use -- whether it be paper, transmitter or Ethernet -- and look to make our content more accessible regardless of how you get there. It's why AkronNewsNow.com recently extended ourselves to Facebook and our increasing use and consideration of Twitter as another way to provide you with the news and information you need.

We've also updated our mobile version of AkronNewsNow.com as well (calling it ANN Mobi in house but don't necessarily look for that online) to be more user-friendly to Blackberry, Palm, MotoQ, iPhone and other mobile devices. It is more of a headache since there's no set absolute standard -- phone manufacturers often tweak their specific products for improvements, which impacts what you read on the mini-screen -- but it clearly is a demand we need to meet to stay in touch with you when all you may have handy is a cellphone.

The technology changes are challenging but also inspiring; after all, we're end users too. More on WAKRNewsNow in the next few weeks...