The San Francisco Chronicle decided on a new kind of community outreach in its “Voice of the Voter” partnership last year with KRON-TV and KQED-FM.
On Aug. 19 the paper announced that voter registration forms would be inserted in the 560,000 issues distributed Sept. 23.
Political Editor Susan Yoachum was assigned to negotiate with the Secretary of State’s office. “When I first called them I would say that the reaction ranged from laughter to incredulity,” she said. “Nobody had ever wanted to do this and it had never been done — so we were breaking new ground.”
The state agreed to provide the forms but said the paper would have to pay about $25,000 to cover the printing and mailing costs. A few days later, the office offered to provide the forms at no cost.
Yoachum knows some journalists believe newspapers should not be encouraging people to vote. “There are some levels of involvement that I’m not particularly comfortable with either, but a level of involvement that essentially promotes practicing democracy is safe.”
Others soon jumped on the bandwagon, said national editor Jim Brewer, who oversaw the “Voice of the Voter.” The San Jose Mercury, the Contra Costa Times, the Alameda Newspaper Group and the Riverside Press Enterprise also included the forms, which were color coded to show which paper distributed them. All told, 39,511 voters registered via the newspaper forms; 15,640 from the Chronicle alone.