![]() It’s very convenient.”Īnnmarie Timmins, a veteran statehouse reporter who is now a senior reporter at the 1-year-old nonprofit New Hampshire Bulletin, said that as a result of COVID-19, “legislators were meeting remotely over Zoom. You can click on the timestamp of the bill, and it’s already laid out for you. It’s even archived to show if you want to only look up a certain bill. “You can get the video you can see who’s talking. Gamard, who said the legislature may have been planning more livestreaming even before COVID-19, characterized the video livestream as a big improvement over audio-only recordings. “They’ve upgraded their technology over the past two years.” Some statehouse journalists say the more extensive livestreaming helped them do their job during the strain of the pandemic.īefore COVID-19 struck, the Delaware General Assembly did not offer video livestreaming of proceedings, but after the building was shut down by the pandemic, “they transitioned pretty much immediately to Zoom and some version of livestreaming,” said Sarah Gamard, a former state government reporter for the News Journal of Wilmington. … It’s been by necessity, but it’s been a great public access tool.” ![]() Thompson believes that the initiative produced more public engagement, adding that he sometimes saw a substantial number of citizens “tuning in to watch during the course of a committee hearing, which is something that was relatively unheard of before COVID. Jason Thompson, communications director for Pennsylvania Senate President Pro Tempore Jake Corman, quantified the expansion of livestreaming during the pandemic: He said the Pennsylvania State Senate livestreamed more than 300 meetings in 2021, including every Senate session and almost every committee hearing. The pandemic triggered much more extensive live video coverage of legislative meetings and sessions – a decision that enabled more live public access to the workings of state government and helped journalists function more efficiently in a difficult environment. statehouses, some of those interviewed said the outcomes were not all bad. While COVID-19 created chaos and forced reporters, at least temporarily, out of many U.S. “Essentially business had to stop because of COVID.” An expansion of livestreaming and other video platforms He had visited Las Vegas, came back, wasn’t feeling well, got a test, and then they just flat-out shut down the Capitol completely,” Blair said. It actually had to be evacuated when a state senator tested positive. “We all went into emergency lockdown period with the Capitol itself. “Nothing like that has ever happened,” said Russell, who covered her first Idaho legislative session in 1986.Ĭhad Blair, the politics and opinion editor of Honolulu Civil Beat, described a similar pandemic disruption at Hawaii’s Capitol. The public policy debate over COVID-19 protocols as a major topic of coverage for journalists reporting on state politics.ĭescribing these uncertain and changing circumstances, Betsy Russell, president of the Idaho Capitol Correspondents Association, recounted how an early 2021 legislative session in her state opened with “basically no precautions,’’ and then had to be shut down after a major COVID-19 outbreak infected scores inside the Capitol.A change in work habits of some statehouse journalists and an opportunity to rethink how they do their jobs and.The reduction of in-person contact between reporters, legislators and state officials.The expanded use of livestreaming or other online platforms for legislative meetings and sessions.But several key themes emerged about the realities of covering state legislative politics in the midst of a lengthy and evolving pandemic. It is clear from the conversations that responses to the COVID-19 outbreak varied from statehouse to statehouse, often depending on its political makeup. To better understand these changes, researchers conducted two dozen interviews with statehouse reporters and staff. For more details about the qualitative interview parameters, see the Methodology. The interviews took between 20 to 30 minutes. Interviewees were selected from study respondents with the goal of representing a range of states, outlet types and outlet sizes, among other factors. The majority of them work for news outlets, but a few work as either a legislative leader’s chief of staff or a statehouse communications official. As part of this report, Pew Research Center conducted and recorded interviews from August 2021 through February 2022 with 24 individuals involved in statehouse coverage.
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