New Political Reporters Bound for Austin

New or Traditional?

Labor Day is the unofficial start of the political season, and as sure as there is another Texas blue “norther” on the way, new journalists are making their journey to Austin to join with others in the Constitutional commitment of covering the capitol. Statistics show that there seem to be fewer members of the fourth estate as the years go by.

KVUE TV (ABC) News Director Frank Volpicella confirmed this afternoon that their new capitol reporter will be arriving in a few days. Martin Bartlett is coming to KVUE from El Paso ABC affiliate KVIA TV where he was a reporter and weekend morning anchor. Bartlett will replace Elise Hu who moved over to the Texas Trubune, a soon-to-be-launched news portal on the web covering politics and public policy.

Bartlett graduated from the University of Mississippi in 2005. CNN’s Kyra Phillips referred to Bartlett as “… our go-to-guy” when he was doing a live shot for them on the drug cartels operating across the border in Juarez.

Also leaving El Paso to cover the capital here in Austin is The El Paso Times education reporter Zahira Torres. Ms. Torres is a rarity. More and more, media outside of Austin rely on local reporters to cover here. If the story is big enough, an out-of-town crew may make the trip. The crews may use facilities at local news media to send the stories back home. If it as legislative story, television crews may shoot a ton of video and interview a host of people to keep “in the can” for possible use later.

More often than not in these lean days, the burden falls on Austin media to cover the stories. If the out-of-town media wants something the local media isn’t covering, they may hire free-lancers to get what they want.

Is that coverage, however? Or is it something that looks, tastes, feels, and smells like news. It is probably only what I call shallow “sound-bite” reporting of little value.

Politics matters in Austin. Close to 20-percent of Austinites work for the government. When the legislature is in session, those working in the service industries are directly affected. That’s why most media have beat reporters for the capitol and politics. Jenny Hoff at KXAN TV (NBC) probably has the longest tenure. News 8 has a brand new capitol reporter.
Karina Kling was the Williamson County bureau chief for News 8. Kevin Benz, News 8 news director, says Kling covered state capitol politics in Lincoln, Nebraska before coming to News 8. News 8 also calls on Capitol pundit Harvey Kronberg for analysis. Rudy Koski at Fox 7 has been around long enough to know the ropes. Alexis Patterson covered the capitol for KEYE TV (CBS) during the last session. She is no longer with the station.

According to the office of the Speaker of the House, for the past three sessions there has been a steady decline in the number of journalists requesting credentials. The high water mark was set in 2003 for the 78th session of the legislature, when 864 journalists were credentials. In 2005 it dropped to 647. It fell further in 2007 to 551. The last session saw only 447 credentials issued. Those numbers may seem high, but the credentials may have been for one day, and the crew packed up and went home.

Robert Wood, capitol bureau chief for Texas State Network, is witnessing a change. Wood has been covering the capitol since 1992. “There are definitely fewer bureaus and reporters these days,” Wood says. “If you look just ten years ago there were television bureaus from Dallas and Houston. The [Houston] Chronicle and San Antonio Express/News were separate and both had staffs. The Dallas Morning News bureau was much larger.”

Some longtime traditional news services remain like Long News Service and the Associated Press, but Wood sees growth in the non-traditional news. New media. “I think you are seeing a far different dynamic starting to emerge in the press corps,” Wood says. “If you went up to the House and Senate galleries during the session, you saw a lot of laptops and that's because there were a lot of bloggers hanging out writing about what was going on. Of course, you also have main-streamers blogging too with better access to elected officials during the session since we have floor access.”

“I think one question that will have to be asked pretty quick is when will the bloggers get the same kind of access that the traditional media gets. I don't think it will happen next session but it will happen, probably when the audience for those publications grows. Right now the traditional media and myself have a far larger reach than do any on-line only blog or publication,” Wood says.

With the Texas Tribune “going live” online November 3rd, floor access may come sooner than later. That’s more than a year away. There are plenty of political games to be played between now and then.

© Jim McNabb, 2009