by David Domke, professor of communication and head of journalism

A week ago, a group of University of Washington students traveled to Texas for five days to cover the "primacaucus" — a complicated combination of primary voting and caucusing that had the potential to end both the Democratic and Republican presidential contests on Tuesday, March 4. We thought it would be a grand learning experience, perhaps even a historic one. It was that and more: We saw the future of political journalism in America.

Along the way, we burned a shoe, were embraced by the Houston gay and lesbian community, went to church several times, met feminist icon Gloria Steinem and watched her words get twisted, saw the Clinton campaign literally turn things around overnight, experienced moments of mountaintop exhilaration as well as sleep-deprived exhaustion, and, on the final day, I — the professor on this wild ride — landed in the hospital, from which I am writing via wireless connection.

This is Journalism 2025. And it is good.

The trip to Texas was part of a last push of reporting on the presidential campaign for 16 students who, in recent weeks, had also covered contests in Idaho and Washington. Our forum has been a Web site called Seattlepoliticore, and we've sought to mix traditional reporting practices of verified facts and vetted sources with the kind of first-person commentary common among Internet bloggers.

When we created our site in early February, the students wondered if anyone would read it. A month later, they've posted hundreds of stories, photos, and videos on our site and also been invited to provide material to The Seattle Times, the Idaho Statesman, The Huffington Post, Crosscut, the popular "Texas on the Potomac" political blog of the Houston Chronicle, Texas' largest newspaper, and on the election section of KIRO-AM's Web site. The volume of output by the students has surpassed anything I envisioned and propelled them to become markedly better journalists.

Further, countless others began linking to Seattlepoliticore, and we found our content picked up by bloggers and traditional news outlets from New York to Miami to San Francisco to even Europe. Traffic increased so much and so fast that the site crashed twice within the span of a few days — both times engendering a mixture of unabashed joy and anxiety among the students. More than once while in Texas, the students interviewed people who said they had read things we had written, which made even their prof proud.

In today's politics and media environment, one can be part of the conversation within minutes and on a shoestring budget. We're proof of that.

For example, by the time we stepped off the plane in Texas, we were equipped with a web of contacts — aided by campaign staffers' always-on availability via cell phones and Blackberries, social networking sites such as Facebook, numerous blogs, and the online presence of news organizations. We split into teams and spent days traveling between Austin, San Antonio, Houston, Waco, and other points. The students took with them cell phones, laptops, pocket-size digital cameras, and wireless network cards (the latter have been the envy of several traditional reporters over the past month), which allowed me to talk with them roughly every few minutes, give or take a minute. I may not have been standing next to them, but I was with them every step.

One of those steps burned a hole in student Will Mari's shoe. He and two classmates were in East Austin, interviewing people at an Obama neighborhood event. While talking with the evening's burger-flipper, Obama volunteer Rudy Malveaux, Mari smelled burnt rubber. He looked down and noted that he was standing on a red-hot barbecue coal. He calmly stamped it out and kept reporting. When you've been in a van going 100 mph to get to a caucus in Idaho and now traveled across the country into the heart of Texas, you don't let a little shoe-fire stop you. But you don't disregard it entirely, either. Instead, Mari wrote it into his coverage of the event, providing a personalized, on-the-scene report that typifies journalistic blogging.

The following day, three other students headed to Houston to cover some campaign door-knocking. En route, they called a local contact (developed through a blog forum prior to arrival in state), who suggested the trio head to Montrose, a gathering place for gays and lesbians. The students found the community via GPS, walked into a coffee shop, and started asking about the locals' political leanings.

Soon they were talking with an out-of-state volunteer who was a former Montana state representative who had opposed gay rights and now was an Obama delegate living in Bellingham. Interesting stuff.

But wait, there's more: The volunteer had been Tom Lee when he lived in Montana but now identified as Rebekah Lee. For student journalists down from Seattle, this was like manna from heaven. But it also required sensitivity and top-to-bottom reporting. Time on the Internet verified some claims, and then the students went old school. They called the Montana Legislative Services Division in Helena and had the librarians fax information about the former representative. They tracked down other sources in Montana. Their initiative got them a first-rate story, which is now being picked up around the Web.

The students talked to so many people in Montrose — what the locals called "the gayborhood" — that by the time they left, they were honorary members: The coffee shop packed them food for the road, and there were hugs all around.

For good or for bad, this wasn't detached, objective reporting. But the end result was journalism featured in the mainstream San Francisco Chronicle's blog and alternative outlet The Advocate. Hitting the sweet spot of both is unusual these days but will be common in tomorrow's political journalism.

Hoping to feel similar Houston love, five other students spent Sunday morning, March 2, in church there. Actually, it was multiple churches. Some went to Joel Osteen's mammoth Lakewood Church — just missing Bill and Chelsea Clinton, who had come unannounced to an earlier service. Some went to hear Republican Party candidate Mike Huckabee at a nearby church, and yet others went to Antioch Missionary Baptist Church, a predominantly African-American congregation. The Houston Chronicle featured two of these pieces (here and here; the third is here), and its Washington, D.C., bureau chief, Richard Dunham, told me, "I think you have more people covering the primary than we do." That's what's possible in a new-media environment in which institutions are no longer as important as initiative, and costs are lower than ever.

Meanwhile, in Austin, a contact tipped us off that Gloria Steinem would be speaking, without fanfare, at a local eatery. Two of the students joined a word-of-mouth crowd of 200 or so. Both students took the cue and wrote about it in introspective terms (here and here).

The institutional press took an entirely different approach: It focused on a couple sentences and then offered a misreading of them.

Specifically, the only other reporter (apparently) in the room, from The New York Observer, reported that Steinem had said, "Suppose John McCain had been Joan McCain and Joan McCain had got captured, shot down and been a POW for eight years. [The media would ask], 'What did you do wrong to get captured? What terrible things did you do while you were there as a captive for eight years?'" The words were correct, but the headline over-reached and triggered a firestorm in which Steinem — and by extension the Clinton campaign — was portrayed as mocking McCain's military history.

But then one of the UW students in attendance, Devon Mills, found something interesting when unpacking her gear upon return to Seattle. She had shot three minutes of video during Steinem's address — and she just happened to catch the pivotal words. When she watched the video, she saw that media and pundits had badly misread Steinem's comments. I agreed. So we jointly posted a piece on Seattlepoliticore in which we do what online journalism and bloggers uniquely do: offer a forum in which anyone, anytime, from almost anywhere, can correct the public record. Don't believe us? Fine. Read what we say, watch the video, and join the conversation. That's the future of political journalism.

It's a dynamic that the Clinton campaign has seemingly come to realize, late but perhaps just soon enough. For almost a month, across Idaho and Washington, the campaign's on-the-ground staffers had kept Seattlepoliticore's student journalists at arm's length. Never dismissive, just not welcoming. In contrast, the Obama campaign and the Republican candidates took our phone calls, returned our e-mails, invited us to see their shops. It was a potent contrast that I wrote about on Crosscut. When we did our advance mapping of contacts in Texas, the pattern remained. And on day one, when we were on the ground in the state, the story was the same. But then, just before we wrote the "They Simply Don't Get It" story, the Clinton campaign got it.

On Friday morning, Feb. 29, the Clinton campaign headquarters in Austin had no time for the students, while the Obama office fed us local story angles. But that evening, at dueling rallies in San Antonio, the Clinton campaign treated us with the same respect and access as the Obama camp. The following morning, staffers at the Clinton H.Q. in Austin greeted the students warmly, invited them in, introduced them to people who came through the doors, fed them story ideas, fed them literally, and invited us to see the campaign through their eyes. The shift in posture toward us was astounding — and it stayed like that through the March 4 voting.

Something profound had changed. Perhaps it was a genuine change of heart, a sense of optimism in the campaign's progress against Obama, a renewed energy, a belief that Tuesday really was Hillary's last stand, or a recognition that how one treats the press actually shapes how the press covers the candidate. Regardless, if it continues, I think it's a shift that opens up possibilities for Clinton's candidacy that were unthinkable just a few weeks ago. And it also points to the realities of the new media landscape.

Everyone who walks through the door today is a journalist. She or he might not be driving a news van or carrying a shoulder camera and, indeed, is far more likely to carry a MacBook than a reporter's notebook. It is unlikely to be someone who is 60, white, and male; instead we will see a rainbow of ethnicity, gender, age, and sexual orientation. Video storytelling will be as important as — perhaps more than — written words. Digital media are the new printing press. They allow people to tell stories 24/7/365.

That's what I'm doing as I write this in a hospital room in Austin, which is where I arrived on the morning of March 4 after realizing I had contracted a nasty-but-treatable bacterial infection in my leg. From my hospital bed, with my trusty cell phone and laptop, I went to work with my students covering the day's primacaucus. They were out talking to people, and I was not standing next to them, but I was with them every step. This piece is dedicated to them. They have boldly brought this 40-year-old, old-school reporter into the 21st century of political journalism. The future belongs to the fearless.

"High Tex: A new generation covers the campaign its own way," by UW Professor David Domke, posted Monday, March 10 to blogs.uwnews.org. UW news blogs is a service of uwnews.org, the University of Washington Office of News and Information.

by David Domke, professor of communication and head of journalism and Kevin Coe, doctoral student at the University of Illinois    

On Tuesday, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee finally gave up on his bid to win the GOP presidential nomination. Let us be among the first to say good riddance.

Huckabee’s long-shot campaign should be remembered for what it was at its core: an unprecedented and dangerous implementation of “the God strategy.” Again and again, Huckabee showed he was willing, even eager, to use religious faith as a political weapon.

Early in the campaign, Huckabee mobilized supporters in Iowa by running an ad touting himself as a “Christian leader” and saying “faith doesn’t just influence me, it really defines me.” The implied contrast to Mitt Romney, a Mormon, was hardly subtle.

Then, as he gained ground on Romney, Huckabee ducked and dodged when reporters asked if he thought Mormonism was a religion or a cult. He eventually affirmed in a New York Times story that Mormonism was indeed a religion—the one that “believe[s] that Jesus and the devil are brothers,” right? Huckabee apologized to Romney for the remark, but the desired damage was done.

So distasteful were Huckabee’s tactics that several prominent commentators, even some within the conservative fold, voiced criticism. Peggy Noonan questioned whether Ronald Reagan could survive the de facto religious test being imposed on candidates, and Charles Krauthammer correctly labeled Huckabee’s “exploitation of religious differences for political gain” as “un-American.”

Perhaps Huckabee just couldn’t help himself; maybe he truly believed that he was an agent of God. When he finally gained ground in the polls, after struggling for the first several months of the campaign, he suggested his rise was due to divine intervention:

“There’s only one explanation for it, and it’s not a human one. It’s the same power that helped a little boy with two fish and five loaves feed a crowd of five thousand people.”

Even as his hopes of winning the nomination dimmed, Huckabee kept the faith. In February he told the Conservative Political Action Conference that he would continue his campaign, saying: “I didn’t major in math, I majored in miracles, and I still believe in them.”

There is an uncomfortable and all too familiar arrogance in a politician who believes that God is on his side. In a world where millions are denied sovereignty, where poverty and disease are widespread, where people regularly kill each other because of their differing religious views, one would like to think that God has more important things to worry about than getting out the Huckabee vote.

Huckabee’s insistence on making his run for the presidency a faith-based crusade was all the more disquieting because of its implications for policy. In January, Huckabee called for the U.S. Constitution to be changed to conform to his own religious views:

“[Some of my opponents] do not want to change the Constitution, but I believe it’s a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God, and that’s what we need to do is to amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards.”

Altering the Constitution based on one narrow interpretation of the Bible is, of course, exactly what the Founding Fathers sought to avoid.

And, after all of this—after doing absolutely everything possible to make religion the centerpiece of his campaign—Huckabee still had the gall to criticize those few journalists who actually scrutinized what his religious views might mean to his presidency. In February, he had this to say to the Christian Science Monitor:

“There has been an attempt to ghettoize me for a very small part of my biography. The last time I was in the pulpit was 1991.”

Last in the pulpit in 1991; last in a political campaign in 2008. God willing, it will stay that way—for the good of faith and the good of the American experiment in democracy.

 by David Domke, professor of communication and head of journalism

Editor's note: David Domke,a UW communication professor and head of journalism, is teaching "Online Journalism and Politics" to a group of undergraduates. Read below about their experiences, and check out their work at http://seattlepoliticore.org

Journalists love to write about the rise and fall of politicians in America. The scribes watch candidates get built up, then chronicle them getting torn down. And, as often as not, journalists don’t just write these storylines — they contribute to them and cement them as well.

Hillary Clinton’s presidential aspirations today are in descent mode — or at least they seem to be so — and news media post-mortems for her campaign are getting churned out faster than newspaper copies. It was Bill’s fault. It was the lack of planning for a post-Super Tuesday campaign. It was poor allocation of campaign funds. Hillary was too wonky, not enough Bubba. The campaign couldn’t match the grass-roots prowess of Obama’s organization.

My students saw some of these elements up close and personal.

SeattlePoliticore.org
Since early January, a team of 16 journalism students at the University of Washington have been covering the 2008 presidential campaign. We’ve gone new media, adopting a mode of blogging that combines traditional reporting, insights from other news outlets, and first-person commentary. It’s somewhere between the voice of the Seattle Times’ David Postman and the rancor of the blogosphere: part journalism, part pundit, part political-newbies. Altogether, we have presented the campaign through youthful eyes. I’m the students’ prof and head of journalism at the UW.

Our forum has been http://www.seattlepoliticore.org, and our material has gotten play at huffingtonpost, the Seattle Times, the Idaho Statesman, and a number of blogs for which my students write. We’ve covered Democratic Party caucuses in Idaho — the state’s Republicans don’t use this method to select delegates — and the caucuses and primaries of both parties around King County, including Seattle proper and the Eastside. Later this week we head to Texas for our grand finale: coverage of the March 4 primary and caucuses (yes, Texas has both too, challenging Washington’s delegate process for most-screwed-up status). It just might be the last big contest for all of the campaigns.

It’s been a powerful experience, both as students and citizens.

We spent two hours stuck at Snoqualmie Pass working via cell phones and wireless network cards, and then sped to Couer d’ Alene to see Northern Idahoans brave ice and freezing weather to give Barack Obama 80 percent of their caucus votes. We were barred from entering the Republican caucus in the 37^th Legislative District in Rainier Beach — until the Seattle City Library and a sheriff’s deputy intervened — and scored an on-camera interview with governor Christine Gregoire at a Democratic caucus in Magnolia. We saw Mercer Island and Sammamish Dems and Repubs conduct themselves with calm and citizen pride.

And along the way we learned some important things about the Obama and Clinton campaigns. We didn’t set out to learn these pieces — but the campaigns taught us loud and clear.

The Worth of Youth
In our coverage of the Idaho and Washington state caucuses, there emerged a lean toward Obama in my students’ writing about the Democratic contest. This pro-Obama frame occurred for three reasons:

• because some of the students have serious political crushes on him, even though they’ve tried to keep all this in check. He inspires them — and I haven’t sought to squelch this, being a prof interested in helping students become citizens.
• because the class is set up as a blogging class, in which politics meets alternative journalism. So their opinion shines through in places, and this was fine as long as they didn’t cross over into fan mail.
• because the Obama campaign treated us like pros — they called us back within minutes, set up interviews, got us press passes, went out of their way to make the campaign accessible. The Clinton campaign, in contrast, didn’t return a single phone call, didn’t provide press access, and did virtually nothing to encourage our coverage. It was either arrogance or disorganization on the Clinton campaign’s part.

Here’s one example: Jeff Giertz, the Obama team’s on-the-ground point person for the press, answered my phone call when I called to ask about press access to the Obama event on February 8 at Key Arena. He said he’d check on getting passes for my students. I figured I’d wait and see if he actually did.  Within 5 minutes he emailed me back saying it was a go, and he could provide four press passes for my students.  I was impressed.  Clearly he had a vested interest in getting college students into the press area — and he did what a campaign person should do: he treated us well and welcomed us to his candidate. He told me to call him anytime.

So I did.

Lots of my students wanted to cover this event, so I called Giertz back 6 hours later and asked for four more passes.  He said yes. The next day when some of my students arrived at Key Arena after the local police had locked the doors and weren’t allowing anyone in — including reporters from local TV and radio outlets — the students dialed up Giertz and he personally came and vouched for them. He followed up the day after the event with an email checking in on how I thought things went. I don’t for a moment think he did all this just to be a nice guy; he had motives.  Of course. 

Still, it’s telling that I made the exact same pitch about “access to college students” to the Clinton campaign, and they didn’t do anything to facilitate our coverage.  Here’s the voice of one of my students, Jennifer Ware:

I noticed a difference between Obama and Clinton when I first started calling their campaigns in the week before the caucuses. At that point Washington state seemed like an afterthought for the Clinton campaign. Hillary wasn’t anywhere to be found in Seattle, but Obama had a campaign office in the heart of Pioneer Square. He had for months, and everyone there seemed more than happy to help.

When I called the Clinton campaign to ask for a contact at their Washington state campaign office, one staffer tried to tell me that Washington was where their campaign headquarters is. “Yes” she said, “Washington, it’s right next to Virginia.”

Obama had the foresight to know he might need Washington state, whereas Clinton apparently never thought she’d have to reach this far. And a tiny part of me felt excluded.

Every single person I’ve dealt with from the Obama campaign was upbeat, positive and helpful. Even when the press couldn’t initially get into the venue on Friday for Obama’s speech, and a reporter from the Seattle Times was yelling at one of the volunteers, she handled it with poise and kindness. It was almost so good it looked staged, but she was real. She said, “I’m just a volunteer from Shoreline, I’ve never done this before, please bear with me.” Even as Obama volunteers managed mobs of people at Key Arena, they did it with purpose, not burden.

And I think it’s because they feel part of a movement.

John McCain spoke in Seattle [the same day] to about 500 people at the Westin Hotel’s conference room. Clinton spoke to a gathering of 5000 at a waterfront pier [on February 7]. Obama spoke at Key Arena, home to the Seattle Supersonics, it seats 18,000 and it wasn’t nearly big enough. People were sitting on the stairs, in the aisles. Seasoned reporters were smiling and nodding softly as he spoke. Some people had tears in their eyes when he came on stage. There’s all kinds of spin out there, but you simply can’t spin those numbers. Or the stark contrast to the others in the race.

When my students had trouble reaching the Clinton campaign in the run-up to the caucuses, I made a call to her national office. I figured that maybe they’d respond to a UW professor better than a student — which would be an error on their part, but still one that we might use to help our coverage.  I told them we were having trouble reaching people — anyone — on the ground in WA state with the Clinton campaign, and I implored them to make sure my request on behalf of my students for press access to Clinton’s event in Seattle received a response.  They assured me I’d hear from them. I emphasized my point a second time.  They kindly repeated that I would certainly hear from people on the ground here.

I’m still waiting for that call.

The Obama and Clinton campaigns weren’t the only ones to come to town. On the Republican Party side, Ron Paul held a rally on the UW campus. Janet Huckabee held a rally at Northwest College and her campaign team reached out to my students covering her husband’s candidacy — returning calls and making sure they had press access. McCain’s campaign aides went out of their way to let my students know about his press event at the Westin, and to get them in. For those scoring at home, five presidential campaigns came to town — and four reached out to my students, treating them like what they are: journalists and citizens.

It seems that the take-home point here is this: the Clinton campaign has made the case that Obama is nothing but rhetoric; he’s supposedly all words, while she’s all action. Our experiences showed us that their campaigns — at least in Seattle — were exactly the opposite. In their treatment of my students, Clinton’s campaign was all talk, while Obama’s was all walk.

It suggests to me that the Obama campaign’s appeal to younger people is not just because of Obama himself. It’s a campaign that treats young people like full adults. As a college prof, I’ve got to give them props. They got my attention — and my students, and the many young people who have been reading our website. And across Washington state, Obama crushed Clinton, defeating her in every county in the state. It’s been a pattern repeated in every contest since.

by David Domke, UW professor of communication and head of journalism

Editor's note: David Domke, UW communication professor and head of journalism, is teaching "Online Journalism and Politics" to a group of undergraduates.

They're blogging at seattlepoliticore.org , but he's also blogged at dailykos.com , billed as a progressive community blog. Here's his Daily Kos posting from Saturday evening after the Washington state caucuses:

This is how a team of 16 students at the University of Washington saw Democratic and Republican caucuses around King County on Saturday.  King County includes heavily-blue Seattle and the purple Eastside of Lake Washington, which includes Microsoft-dominated Redmond.

We liveblogged the Seattle-area caucuses at seattlepoliticore.org. I'm the students' prof and head of journalism at the UW. The site's content is part journalism, part pundit, part political-newbies. Altogether, the site presents these caucuses through youthful eyes.

Along the way we learned something important about the Obama and Clinton campaigns. We didn't set out to learn this -- but the campaigns taught us loud and clear.

Know this when looking at the site: there is a lean toward Obama in the coverage. This occurred for three reasons:

1. because the students have serious crushes on him, even though they've tried to keep all this in check. 

1. because the class is set up as a blogging class, in which politics meets alternative journalism. So their opinion shines through in places.

1. because the Obama campaign treated us like pros -- they called us back within minutes, set up interviews, got us press passes, went out of their way to make the campaign accessible. The Clinton campaign, in contrast, didn't return a single phone call, didn't provide press access, and did virtually nothing to encourage our coverage. It was either arrogance or disorganization on the Clinton camapign's part.

Here's one example: Jeff Giertz, the Obama team's on-the-ground point person for the press, answered my phone call when I called to ask about press access to the Obama event Friday at Key Arena. He said he'd check on getting passes for my students. I figured I'd wait and see if he actually did.  Within 5 minutes he emailed me back saying it was a go, and he could provide 4 press passes for my students.  I was impressed.  Clearly he had a vested interest in getting college students into the press area -- and he did what a campaign person should do: he treated us well and welcomed us to his candidate. He told me to call him anytime.

So I did.

I called back 6 hours later and asked for 4 more passes.  He said yes. The next day when some of my students arrived at Key Arena after the local police had locked the doors and weren't allowing anyone in, the students called Giertz and he personally came and vouched for them. He followed up today with an email checking in on how things went, from my perspective. I don't for a moment think he's doing all this just to be a nice guy; he's got motives.  Of course. 

Still, it's telling that I made the exact same pitch about "access to college students" to the Clinton campaign, and they didn't do anything to facilitate our coverage.  When I talked to the press folks at the national office, I told them we were having trouble reaching people -- anyone -- on the ground in WA state with the Clinton campaign, and I implored them to make sure my request on behalf of my students for press access to Clinton's event Thursday night in Seattle received a response.  They assured me I'd hear from them.

I'm still waiting for that call.

My point here is this: the Obama campaign's appeal to younger people is not just because of Obama himself. It's a campaign that treats young people like full adults. As a college prof, I've got to give them props. They got my attention -- and my students, and the many young people who have been reading our website. And tonight, across Washington state, Obama is crushing Clinton, 68-31 with 96% of caucus precincts reporting.

UPDATE: On the recommended list???  You just gave my students another reason to think politics and their voices aren't a waste of time. Thank you.

Here's the voice of one of my students.  A couple weeks ago she wrote this. This morning she sent me these thoughts:

I noticed a difference between Obama and Clinton when I first started my project calling their campaigns. At that point Washington state seemed like an afterthought for the Clinton campaign. Hillary wasn't anywhere to be found in Seattle, but Obama had a campaign office in the heart of Pioneer Square, a Seattle centerplace. He had for months, and everyone there seemed more than happy to help.

When I called the Clinton campaign to ask for a contact at their Washington state campaign office, one staffer tried to tell me that Washington was where their campaign headquarters is. "Yes" she said, "Washington, it's right next to Virginia."

Obama had the foresight to know he might need Washington state, whereas Clinton never thought she'd have to reach this far. And a tiny part of me felt excluded.

Every single person I've dealt with from the Obama campaign has been upbeat, positive and helpful. Even when the press couldn't initially get into the venue on Friday for Obama's speech, and a reporter from the Seattle Times was yelling at one of the volunteers, she handled it with poise and kindness. It was almost so good it looked staged, but she was real. She said, "I'm just a volunteer from Shoreline, I've never done this before, please bear with me." Even as Obama volunteers managed mobs of people at Key Arena, they did it with purpose, not burden.

And I think it's because they feel part of a movement.

John McCain spoke in Seattle to about 50 500 people at the Westin Hotel's conference room. Clinton spoke to a gathering of 5000 at a waterfront pier. Obama spoke at Key Arena, home to the Seattle Supersonics, it seats 18,000 and it wasn't nearly big enough. People were sitting on the stairs, in the aisles. Seasoned reporters were smiling and nodding softly as he spoke. Some people had tears in their eyes when he came on stage. There's all kinds of spin out there, but you simply can't spin those numbers. Or the stark contrast to the others in the race.

And here's the voice of another student in my class, from a comment in this diary thread:

If [the Clinton campaign] cared, they could have done more...  Read my diary I wrote this morning. After covering the Obama press conference that morning, we rushed to Key Arena, but the doors were already closed. The police would not let us in, however one call to Jeff from the Obama campaign, and not only did we get in, but he personally came out and got us.  Hillary's campaign didn't even give us the chance. If she care[s] about youth, she could have done something...anything...seriously, anything...

by mrsellers on Sun Feb 10, 2008 at 01:21:01 AM PST

One other thing, to be fair to all in this race: there were three other campaigns that came to Seattle this past week -- all on the Republican side. Ron Paul held a rally on the UW campus. Janet Huckabee held a rally at Northwest College and her campaign team reached out to my students covering her husband's candidacy. McCain's campaign aides went out of their way to let my students know about a press event, and to get them in.

To summarize, then: 5 campaigns came to town -- and 4 reached out to my students. I applaud those that did, and scratch my head over the one that didn't.

By David Domke, UW professor of communication and head of Journalism

In winning contests in 13 states on Super Tuesday, Democratic Party presidential candidate Barack Obama displayed his ability to draw voters from all corners of America. Most notably, perhaps, he beat primary competitor Hillary Clinton in a large number of states that have tilted Republican in recent decades.

Such successes are intriguing for any Democratic candidate running for president. For an African-American man virtually unknown just a few years ago, there can be only one explanation: God must be involved.

In the politics, that is.

Transcending the chasm of race is difficult in the United States. For politicians in America, an effective way to do so is by accentuating religious faith. More than 90% of U.S. adults consistently say they believe in God or a universal spirit — prompting George Gallup Jr. to remark that it’s not even worth polling the matter. As a result, emphasizing that one is a “person of faith” has the ability to connect more Americans than any other campaign talking point.

This has become particularly so in recent decades. Analysis of more than 15,000 public communications by U.S. political leaders from Franklin Roosevelt’s election in 1932 — the origin of what scholars call the “modern presidency” — through the first six years of George W. Bush’s administration shows an astonishing increase in religious rhetoric beginning in 1980. That year Ronald Reagan ran a campaign shot through with religious themes and calculated outreach to newly mobilized evangelicals. The approach was so successful that subsequent presidents and presidential hopefuls have followed suit. My colleague Kevin Coe and I call this the God strategy.

This approach reaps rewards for any candidate, but for an African American politician it is essential. Faith provides a deeply felt connection that allows — perhaps even compels — many white voters to see a minority candidate as fully human. Yes, history shows that faith prompts some to be more prejudiced; but in the 21st century, far more draw from their sacred texts and traditions the message that God is colorblind.

As Americans struggle to overcome racial biases, invocations of faith by a black candidate go a long way towards appealing to the better angels of all Americans’ nature.

Obama  understands the political value of trumpeting a mainstream Christian faith — and the danger of having those beliefs questioned. His campaign reacted strongly to two e-mail whisper campaigns, one that accused him of being a Muslim and another that accused his church, Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, of being anti-white.

Obama turned both into opportunities, taking to the airwaves to discuss his faith and putting out a statement describing himself as a “committed Christian.” On Saturday in red-state Boise, before an audience of 14,000 — equivalent to one-tenth of all registered voters in the state — Obama directly addressed the anti-Muslim campaign and declared, “I've been going to the same church for 20 years, praising Jesus.”

All of this has helped Obama reach across demographic and ideological lines to attract voters. Consider that he was the first Democratic presidential candidate to visit Idaho since Harry Truman — an approach that paid off when he won 80% of the state’s caucus delegates, the largest single victory for any presidential candidate in the 2008 campaign.

To understand just how valuable Obama’s emphasis on faith is, consider an event Obama attended in December 2006 — an AIDS summit meeting of key religious leaders held at Saddleback Church in Southern California, home of prominent evangelical Rick Warren.

There, in front of an audience consisting primarily of white conservatives, Obama was gently chided by Republican Senator Sam Brownback — a favorite among Christian conservatives — for moving in on his territory. “Welcome to my house,” Brownback said.

When it was his turn, Obama took the podium and played his trump card. “This is my house too,” he said. “This is God’s house.” The audience gave Obama a standing ovation, accompanied by enthusiastic shouts of “Amen.” Two months later, the junior senator from Illinois announced he was running for president, opening his kickoff speech with these words: “Giving all praise and honor to God for bringing us together here today.”

As we move beyond Super Tuesday and into the rest of the primary season, Obama’s willingness to emphasize his Christian faith might well be his saving grace.