Without walk and talks and press gaggles, Capitol Hill and statehouse reporting is looking pretty different.
These beats arguably involve the most face time with sources. In addition to committee hearings and press conferences, good Capitol reporters depend on one-on-one conversations — be that pulling members off the floor, catching them in the hall or going to small press availabilities.
Legislatures on the state and federal levels continue to meet. Some are going fully virtual, while others are implementing new safety protocols to protect members, staffers and reporters from COVID-19 contamination risks. Those have included limits on the number of people allowed in briefing rooms, 6-foot distance markers and mask recommendations. Each approach has thrown a wrench in the day-to-day for journalists.
Bryan Lowry, the Washington correspondent for The Kansas City Star, started isolating early. Like many Washington reporters, he attended the Conservative Political Action Conference, otherwise known as CPAC, in early March.
That convention drew some of the top Republican elected officials and donors in the U.S., including President Donald Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. A doctor who attended the conference despite having flu symptoms was soon found to have been infected with the coronavirus. Officials urged everyone else who went to the event to isolate for two weeks.
“By the time I got out of that 14-day period without symptoms, the entire world had started to change,” Lowry said.
Lowry said that the workarounds congressional reporters are using now aren’t entirely new — they’re similar to how reporters cover Congress when it’s out of session. The shift to virtual coverage means more phone interviews, for the most part, and Lowery said setting up interviews once a week or so and asking questions for several stories is typical out of session.
But demand is higher right now. That has highlighted a pivotal part of source management on the beat.
“It’s made me much more dependent on the spokespeople in the offices,” Lowry said. “It’s really important to maintain those relationships. You already have to deal with the people who are gatekeepers, now it’s even more so.”
He said the pandemic and its response have also led to ramped-up communication between the Washington bureau and the home base for The Kansas City Star and other McClatchy papers.
For example, he said, a breaking news reporter was covering COVID-19 and the veterans’ hospital response. He connected the reporter with Kansas Sen. Jerry Moran, who serves as the chairman of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee.
“I’m making sure I’m in touch with people at the Star, that I can be a pathway,” he said.
Niki Kelly, a reporter covering Indiana capitol for The Journal Gazette in Fort Wayne, Indiana, said that before the statehouse went fully virtual, she and other reporters also amped up some of what they were already doing, such as sharing audio files or backing each other up when questions weren’t answered in briefings.
She said a major help to her coverage has been daily briefings by top officials, including Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb.
Catherine Sweeney is a freelance reporter covering COVID-19 for Poynter. You can reach her at catherinejsweeney@gmail.com or @CathJSweeney on Twitter.
