Politics and Journalism

In Cities and Sustainability class on Wednesday, we heard from two fabulous guest speakers - Josh McNeil, head of the League of Conservation voters on Philadelphia, and Anthony Campisi, a journalist for the Philadelphia Inquirer. They were each charismatic speakers with some great things to say.

Josh:

• The average Amercian spends 6 minutes per month thinking about policy! You have sot start where the people and have very little time to influence their opinion on politics. 
• People don't care just because you do. 
• There hasn't been one law passed on shale gas in PA because we started campaigning in the wrong way. 
• Campaigns care about votes, money, and lastly, doing the right thing. 
• PA has no election rules - $1.6 million of the total $6 million of the governor's campaign came from gas drillers. 
• People running for political positions are instructed to spend 80-90% of their time on the phone asking people for money. That means politicians only have 10% of their time left for policy!
• Sustainability is by nature long term, and news is sudden, so it can be very hard to write stories on sustainability. 

Anthony:

• Philadelphia currently has 2 news papers which is extremely rare. In addition, they are both run by the same company and are possibly consolidating.
• The inquirer used to have 17 reporters in each suburb - they are now cut back to 1 or 1.5 reporters in each. 
• The stories he finds interesting are those that are really interesting, regionally significant, or unexpected.