Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Interesting start to week . . .

KOMO News - Mrs. Clemson's LW Grade 4 Classroom
Monday, I was given the opportunity to engage in an interview for two television stations, an activity that is very low on my "wish" list.  This followed last Friday when Board President Tim Adam was interviewed by KING in response to an invitation to all stations related to our bond measure.  It seems that when one station picks up the others follow closely behind.  That was conformed yesterday when the fourth local station KIRO called and said they were on the way.  Though I don't like these interviews, the opportunity to share information about our facility needs far outweighed my comfortableness.

One of the problems with this format is that we have little influence on what ends up on the screen.  The KOMO News interview lasted for multiple minutes with only a few onscreen seconds from Laurel and me after editing.  Unfortunately, the focus in all of these interviews including a radio piece with Kevin Patterson was not on the possibilities resulting from a new Tahoma High School and Regional Learning Center or on how well we are doing.  The stations wanted to know about the year-round, multi-track and double shift models.  I was even asked if I really believed the system would actually do it in the event of a failed bond measure and I said that we have had many conversations over time and that the current Board would implement the model when the grade level band capacity number is reached.   It will be interesting to see what KIRO does as they were the last and provided more of an opportunity to share, though I fear they make focus on the reasons for a "no" vote and my thoughts over time about failed bond measures.

Here is a link to the KOMO News piece with the title telling their focus.  By the way, I don't recall ever using the word "warning" when we talk about alternative delivery models.


The only other time I can recall being interviewed related to our bond needs was after the failure of the 2011 measure when a station once again wanted to focus on what would happen next.  There has never been a single day or three day period when we have received this much TV exposure on any issue.  Don't know if it will make a difference, but if it generates conversation in the community it is all that we can expect.

Related to the bond measure, we learned that as of yesterday there were 137 new voter registrations over the last month and that since the April 2011 election there have been 3397 new registrations.  Once again, don't know what this will mean on November 5th, but having more people register to vote is always positive.


2 comments:

Scott Mitchell said...

Mike, you did great on all the different snippets I saw you on and I can agree that even though I have only done media spots once, it is very low on my comfort and desire list also. As far as content goes, I thought that KOMO was fairly balanced. The lack of knowledge and substance in all the spots though is sad. On KIRO, they kept calling it a levy (in their headings and in their actual footage). It is also sad the lack of knowledge that people have of the situation, as if Tahoma has wasted their money and need to ask for more because we have misspent. It is disappointing to see this type of reporting and maybe I am too attached to my work but I do not see how people cannot support schools. Hopefully this media press will encourage people to really dig into what is at the heart of this BOND measure, that we are wanting to create space in quality learning environments for children, we want to provide classrooms for our growing community, and that we are not a district asking for more because we have misspent but because we are a growing community that people want to live in because of the education we provide for young people. I encourage all of our community to look at what they can do for our children and the future.

Wendy Castleman said...

(Sorry for the belated comments -- I have been way behind on reading your blog).
It's too bad that The Times didn't cover the issue -- seems that if local TV media are following up after a balanced newspaper article they sometimes have a better end result. I'm sure I am biased, though, being a former print journalist.
Many sad and misinformed comments below the online versions of these TV news "articles." I hope that voters with questions have not based their opinions solely on those reports. But, I agree, if the news segments at least accomplished increasing awareness about the measure, it was a good step even though they did leave out 90 percent of the story.