Political coverage is unconventional

The two announcements seemed to come almost simultaneously:

* The three traditional networks -- ABC, CBS and NBC -- would each cover only three of the 28 hours of the Democratic National Convention, which starts Monday in Boston (and about the same amount of the Republican National Convention, which starts Aug. 30 in New York).

* Twenty-eight bloggers had been issued credentials for the Democratic convention, with more expected every day.

Like most Americans of a certain age, I grew up with the networks providing gavel-to-gavel coverage, so it’s hard not to see these announcements as truly heralding a changing of the media guard.

And not, I fear, for the better.

Yes, I know. Bloggers are the wave of the (not-too-distant) future, the unfiltered voice of true democracy, the one opportunity for the independent little guy to have a say in a world increasingly dominated by massive, nameless, multimedia conglomerates. But too many bloggers sound like a cross between a guy in a barroom and a guy on a soapbox. Or maybe a guy on a soapbox in a barroom. This isn’t to suggest that they don’t have value. Many do, whether as simple tip services or as the expression of intelligent, provocative, unique (if often stupefyingly solipsistic) viewpoints. But bloggers are more the cyberspace equivalent of columnists than reporters -- opinion-mongers, not news-gatherers. And at a convention, I’m more interested in news and insight than I am in opinion and outrage.

The networks say there really isn’t much traditional news broken at conventions anymore. For years now, the presidential candidates have been chosen by party primaries, not by convention delegates. The running mates are picked before the convention begins. The last time I can recall even a flicker of convention interest in the vice presidential selection was 1980, when reports circulated that Ronald Reagan might want former President Gerald Ford on the Republican ticket.

Thus -- ironically -- the more the conventions have become predictable, tightly scripted, made-for-television events, the less interested television has become in showing them.

But as Jim Lehrer, executive editor and anchor of “The NewsHour” on PBS says, “If conventions aren’t the same old story anymore, journalists should find the new story and go out and cover it.

“Some journalists [say] if there are no floor fights, then there is no story,” Lehrer says. “I disagree with that. The story is different, but it remains important. We can’t say, ‘Here’s the kind of news story I’d like today. Here’s the kind of convention we’d like because this is what we had in 1968.’ We have to cover the story as we find it, not some story based on a nostalgic wish for olden times.”

Lehrer and PBS will provide live, prime-time, gavel-to-gavel coverage of the Democratic convention (and, later, of the Republican convention). Lehrer, who’s covered the conventions since 1968, when he was a reporter for the (now defunct) Dallas Times-Herald, says the issues involved in this election make it the most important presidential election of our lifetime -- a judgment with which I fully agree.

“What in hell could be a bigger story than that?” he asks. “I do not understand a journalistic decision not to cover the conventions fully. A huge majority of the undecided voters who really decide these elections don’t come to grips with the issues until convention time. That’s when they start paying attention.... That’s when they start to care about the candidates and their entourages.”

The campaigns will run months after the conventions, but it’s the conventions that provide their true kickoff and focal point. Changes in the conventions themselves require the networks -- like all news organizations -- to be more creative in their approach, not to back off and give up.

“It’s up to us to see and report what they say there and put it in context and to report what they don’t say -- the Republicans won’t want to talk about weapons of mass destruction, and the Democrats won’t want to talk about same-sex marriage -- and put that in context too,” Lehrer says. “This is all about context and analysis. It’s more difficult than accident-on-the-freeway reporting, but it’s incredibly important.”

The broadcast networks, which began covering the conventions in 1948, haven’t provided gavel-to-gavel coverage since 1980, and they’ve been cutting back ever since. In 1996, Ted Koppel of ABC walked out of the Republican convention, complaining that there was no news. He echoed those thoughts this month when he told the Television Critics Assn. that the conventions had become mere “publicity-making machines” for the two parties.

Maybe.

But Robert Zelnick, who was an ABC correspondent and news executive for 21 years, still thinks the networks are “wrong historically and wrong as journalists [to cut back so much]. They’re disserving the community at large.

“I don’t insist on gavel-to-gavel coverage of every minute by all three networks,” Zelnick says, “but there is an element of leadership involved, and the networks are falling down in that obligation.”

The conventions, Zelnick says, “have always served many purposes, and produced many stories, beyond the competition for the nomination,” and in his current job -- as chairman of the journalism department at Boston University -- he’s determined to see those stories covered by his students.

There are 67 of them in his special summer class on the media and politics, and they’ll cover the convention for a wide variety of small newspapers and television stations throughout the country. With the convention in Boston, Zelnick sees this as an ideal opportunity to turn academic exercises into a real-life laboratory, a lesson in both journalism and civics.

I wish the networks were similarly motivated.

Cable will cover

Yes, I realize that C-Span will cover every millisecond of both conventions and that CNN, Fox and MSNBC -- as well as every cable outlet from ESPN to MTV -- will also provide convention coverage. The broadcast networks themselves will funnel some coverage on to websites and digital cable channels.

So I’m not worried that the networks’ abdication of their most basic public responsibility will leave me or anyone else bereft of whatever convention news the already-anointed presidential candidates and their already-chosen running mates manage to generate. And I do understand that the networks are a business, a business built on advertising, advertising whose rates are dependent on audience size.

When ABC televised an hour of the Republican convention’s opening night in 2000, only 5.9 million Americans bothered to watch. Over on NBC, 10 million people tuned in to a rerun of “Third Watch.”

The networks don’t want to lose large sums of money because of low ratings while simultaneously spending large sums of money to cover the conventions full time.

But in this era of reality television, the ultimate reality is that voter turnout has been declining for 40 years, and in an election with as much at stake as this one -- with the threat of an Extreme Makeover in the body politic, with democracy as an at-risk Survivor -- the networks have a responsibility to do all they can to engage and inform as many viewers as possible as these conventions unfold.

David Shaw can be reached at david.shaw@latimes.com. To read his previous “Media Matters” columns, please go to latimes.com/shaw-media.