Campaign Audio from PRX

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!

Michael Leland’s reporters had everything in place until the rain came. Then the ice. Then the snow. On Sunday night before the primary Wisconsin Public Radio’s News Director was at home on the phone with his reporters all over the state to see who could dig out and cover what.

“It was the most frustrating night of the primary. We had three reporters ready to cover things. There was a lot of scrambling to get people around. We had an inch and a half of rain that froze overnight. Then by midday it started snowing.”

Events were rescheduled, candidates didn’t show up, but all together things came together.

“For us the key for us was having reporters who have been through it before … especially on Sunday when things started falling apart. Just being flexible and having good people on the ground.”

Leland adds:”They really took the lead in keeping me informed as to what was on and what was off.”

In addition to posting raw audio to PRX, Leland used his nine reporters scattered over the state to produce nearly 40 election related stories over 11 days: 30 1:00+ wraps, three 3:30 features, and a four-part issue series that ran Tuesday-Friday the week before the primary. The series (which looked at Iraq, Health Care, Jobs, and Energy) used tape from stake-holders, local university professors, and other non-profit leaders.

What WPR’s issues series didn’t have a lot of was actual tape from the candidates talking about the issues. Two days after the primary Leland looked at what we at PRX are putting together and said it could have been a good resource had he know about it (especially the recent package on Clinton’s health plan).

Aside from weather, another of Leland’s main struggles in covering the election so close to home was working in blind tandem with NPR.

“The one challenge we had in dealing with a major national story was how the network was covering it. So we tried to keep to local issues important to the state. And we ended up trying to anticipate what the network would run because you have the issue that a [local] reporter piece would run just after a national piece.”

Overall, Leland is very happy with his reporters and thinks his listeners were better informed because of their hard work. If he had to name a disappointment? The candidates. They split town before the results were in.

“After all this coverage we did, we were at all the election watch party, but the candidates had moved on by then. It would have been great to have the victory speeches.”