Campaign Audio from PRX

We’re so close to election day I think we deserve a countdown… and some good radio to go along with it.  WYSO’s Emily McCord had a nice news feature on how voters in Ohio are voting after loosing their job.  Check it out.

For our brethren in states still covering the Democratic primary, here’s 3 (FREE) sound bite collections to help make the elections local and tailored to your listeners.

• Health Care (Obama & Clinton)
• Foreign Policy
• Economy (Obama & Clinton)
• Or all of our speeches tagged and ready to go

So how do you use these? Give them to someone in your newsroom to take a closer look at the issues your listeners care about. It can be as easy as bringing a local university professor into the studio. Or it can be ambitious like what Wisconsin Public Radio did, a 4-parter that reached deep into the community.

Other ways :

• Use them as conversation-starters for local talk/call-in shows.
• Add balance for when only one candidate comes to town.
• Generate more web traffic by posting them online and encouraging listeners to post their responses.

There’s lots of things you can do. If you think of other ways, tell me about it!

Back again with health care resources for Texas. (Ohio NDs should scroll down a bit).

Health care policy is a central issue in the Democratic primary this year, especially in Texas which as one of the highest uninsured rates in the country. To help cover the issue, PRX has some pre-game for programmers in Texas:

SERIES: Barack Obama Addresses Health Care

SERIES: Hillary Clinton Addresses Health Care

These two collections pull together and organize audio from the candidates in order to help stations parse the main policy differences. Newsrooms of all sizes can work this audio into their newscast in a number of ways. Here’s some thoughts:

1. Audio to hang vox around for a pulse of Texas package
2. Bumpers or conversation starters for call-in shows
3. Promos for election night coverage
4. Reporter packages that analyze the issues facing Texans

If this last one is for you, I have some more resources to help out:

• Texas has almost six million uninsured people who increase premiums for insured Texans by more than $1500 a year. So says the Texas Health Institute in their report A Vision for Change: Policy Solutions for Increasing Health Coverage in Texas. THI is a non-partisan research center that is not making endorsements and is happy to give interviews to the press. Camille Miller can be reached at 512-279-3904 or cmiller@texashealthinstitute.org.

• Anne Dunkelberg helps run the Center for Public Policy Priorities in Austin which has a number of Texas related health links here. She is best reached through the press officer Lynsey Kluever at 512-320-0222, ext. 112 or at dunkelberg@cppp.org.

• Lastly, Rae Lynn Mitchell runs press for Texas A&M’s School of Rural Public Health and has a dozen or so different researchers versed in public health policy who can speak generally about each candidate’s health care plan as it relates to rural Texas. Rae Lynn can be reached at 979-862-2419 or rlmitchell@srph.tamhsc.edu. NOTE: reporters should know the school’s dean is a longtime Clinton pal and worked in President Clinton’s administration.

Happy hunting!

This weary election curator went without health insurance a few years after college. A cut on the back of my hand cost some $600 dollars. A headache in 2001 went for a whopping $1200!

But lo, here come our benevolent politicians to punt around what will undoubtedly become a major issue this election season. To help PRX, has some pre-game for programmers in Ohio (Texas coming soon):

SERIES: Barack Obama Addresses Health Care

SERIES: Hillary Clinton Addresses Health Care

These two collections pull together and organize audio from the candidates in order to help stations parse the main policy differences. Newsrooms of all sizes can work this audio into their newscast in a number of ways. Here’s some thoughts:

1. Audio to hang vox around for a pulse of Ohio package
2. Bumpers or conversation starters for call-in shows
3. Promos for the debate or election night coverage
4. Reporter packages that analyze the issues facing Ohioans.

If this last one is for you, I have some more tidbits. Ohio spent $3.6 billion in 2006 on medical care for the uninsured. This comes from the Health Policy Institute of Ohio and their report Mapping Health Spending and Insurance Coverage in Ohio. There’s enough data in this report for an enterprising reporter to dig down and come up with something good this week.

Want more?

How about county-level data on the uninsured here. This also comes from HPIO and can give your listeners a feel for the number of uninsured in their county.

For sources who can provide thoughtful insight into how the health care debate affects Ohioans, I’ve screened these two and recommend them both:

• Jason Sanford, spokesmen for the Health Policy Institute of Ohio (jsanford@healthpolicyohio.org). Sanford is better than the average press officer. He’s knowledgeable about Clinton’s and Obama’s health plans and has good and bad things to say about both. He makes no endorsement and has never donated to a political campaign (I checked).

• Nancy Cooper (coopern@ohio.edu) is the Program Coordinator for Ohio University’s Health Policy Fellowship (she runs the fellowship and supervises the research in health policy). She’s well informed and also is also not making endorsements (though she shows up in the FEC database as donating to Ronald Reagan).

My last tip: the Plain-Dealer is running their health-care story on Saturday. Still time to beat them!