President Barack Obama is borrowing a page from an old playbook to show the medium is still the message.
Just look at whom the president called on during his prime time presser March 24: Lourdes Meluza of Univision and Kevin Chappell, senior editor of
EbonyJet.
Calling on Meluza, a Latina reporting for the country's largest Spanish-language network, and Chappell, an African American writing for one of the country's oldest African American-owned magazines, sent an unmistakable signal that we're looking at big tent politics here. Real big.
Obama's decision to reach out directly to ethnic media tells us the White House knows something that mainstream papers and television are learning the hard way: As communities change, so do their sources for news and information.
"Two-thirds of our readers don't depend on the mainstream media for their news," Chappell said in an interview with Poynter. "They may read the paper once a week, they may watch cable news, but they depend on us to give them the news of the day. The White House realizes that to get their message out they have to reach out to different forms of media."
A spokesman for the White House, Shin Inouye,
said in an interview that working directly with the ethnic media allows the administration to relate particular topics, such as the stimulus package and the budget, to diverse communities.
"We're looking at specific aspects of programs through the prism of how it gets to that community, and making information available to them," he said.
The result: An informed community that knows what resources are at their exposure.
On March 26, a day after the president's presser, Inouye briefed Native American reporters and editors on specific programs in the budget and stimulus package of interest to them:
$54.8 million for local energy efficiency improvements in Indian country and
$23.6 million in Recovery Act funds to reduce violence against Native American women through the U.S. Department of Justice, to name two.
Native Americans aren't the only groups receiving information from inside.
Chappell said the administration has made senior officials -- Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel
, Senior Adviser Valerie Jarrett, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan and others -- available to black media from the first days.
"To have those sit-downs with folks who are making those decisions has meant a great deal to us," said Chappell. "We've taken those interviews and told our readers how the stimulus package would affect not only the country as a whole, but how it affects various African American districts. Having access translates into better and more detailed stories that we wouldn't be able to give our readers otherwise."
Members of New America Media, an association of ethnic newspapers, radio and television programmers, recently met with the White House communications office "to discuss ways NAM can help deliver important public policy, safety and health information to ethnic communities in the US," according to the association's
March 27 newsletter.
"It demonstrates that the White House communications office is serious about ensuring that all Americans receive critical information about policy issues that impact their lives," NAM Executive Director Sandy Close said in the newsletter.
For a sense of how wide the White House is casting its message, consider the ethnic communities that NAM members serve: African American, Hispanic, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Native American, Burmese and Turkish in Nashville, Tenn., Somali and Hmong in Minneapolis, Minn., as well as the Mixtec, Iranian and Romanian communities in Los Angeles.
If power among the Washington news corps is measured by sources and access, the ethnic media have tapped a main vein.
"We demonstrated throughout the campaign we were serious about covering then candidate Obama, and if he became president we would continue that throughout his term," said Chappell. "Those relationships definitely help now."
