Capitol Morning Report

Thursday, May 4, 2000

MEET THE MEDIA By Bob Fairbanks

Jack Kavanagh is a quick, intelligent TV reporter who decided three years ago --at age 49-- that his job at Channel 13 was going nowhere. Viewers seemed bored by politics and government, and the station’s management was going along.

    But politics and government were the subjects Kavanagh esteemed and had been covering since he got into the news business back in 1974. He had started as a radio reporter in his home town of Providence, Rhode Island, and cheerfully moved west in 1980 after the company that owned his station bought Sacramento’s Channel 13.

    All went well for several years. He was covering the “heavy decisions” being made in the Legislature and on the ballot, and was presenting them clearly to the local citizenry. But slowly the situation began to change. Local news became a “profit center,”and ratings became the only measure of a job well done. He still remembers the consultant at the station who grudgingly allowed him to continue doing stories from the Capitol, but wanted no pictures from inside the building. “It’s a visual turn-off,” Kavanagh was told.

     In short, the direction was clear, and in 1997 Kavanagh decided to quit. Fortunately, he and his wife, Irene, had invested wisely over previous years, she had a good job and the couple had no children. He could go for a while without a regular paycheck and use his experience to develop a new career.

     His assets were his talent and the renown he’d accumulated during his 17 years with Channel 13, including the years in which he’d hosted his own Sunday morning public affairs show. Furthermore, in 1996 he’d become even better known by adding a second show to his repertoire, California CapitolWeek. It runs Friday evenings on Channel 6, and he continues as co-host.

     In other words, and given his assets, why should he not become THE Jack Kavanagh, a sought after political commentator, a respected teacher of media techniques and a witty public speaker?

    The answer is that he’s getting there, though not perhaps in the way he’d planned. And the reason is that another enterprise has come to overshadow the rest of what he does. It’s a web site called “Rough & Tumble” (http:/rtumble.com) and it’s become must viewing for anyone with a computer, a modem and an interest in CA government and politics.

    What Kavanagh does is this: Each morning he reads the daily editions of California’s newspapers, as displayed on their web pages, and marks the stories, op ed pieces and columns that bear on state government and politics. He then prepares a brief summary of each and displays his summaries on his web site along with a link back to the newspaper’s page. Thus, a visitor to Rough & Tumble may review the news of the day by scrolling through Kavanagh’s summaries, and may –with a mouse click– retrieve the full text of whatever story interests him or her. (Kavanagh also covers the web page editions of the Washington Post, the NY Times and the California section of the Wall Street Journal. Of all the papers on Kavanagh’s page, only the Wall St. Journal charges a subscription fee to view its texts.)

    Kavanagh has been preparing news summaries for many years, mostly to prep for his public affairs show. He began displaying them on a web site about four years ago in hopes of stimulating interest in public affairs among his colleagues at Channel 13. Although they were lukewarm, others were not, and he soon developed a following across the nation. Currently, he gets about 2400 page views/day.

     Daily news reviews are nothing new. Battalions of legislative interns have been clipping, pasting and distributing summaries for years. And ditto for lobbying offices, PR firms and many a state agency. People connected to government all want to know what’s being said about them out there.

    However, by taking the service on-line, Kavanagh not only makes it available to more people but speeds and broadens it as well. How else, for instance, could anyone in the Capitol community know before lunch what was bannered that morning in the geographically distant Riverside Press Enterprise? True, he or she could check the paper’s web page, as Kavanagh has done. But why bother? Kavanagh’s been there and done that, and done it for the other papers as well.

    Because Kavanagh’s web site has become so much a part of the Capitol routine, like checking the Daily Files to see what time the floor sessions are supposed to begin, it took a fresh perspective to notice how important it had become. Reporter Andrew LaMar arrived four months ago to cover the Capitol for the Contra Costa Times and was told immediately by colleagues and others that he must read Rough & Tumble to keep up with what’s going on.

    LaMar did as instructed, and soon realized that what others were taking for granted was worth a story in itself. His piece ran April 9^th under the headline “Political Web site has loyal followers. The response to Rough & Tumble surprises its creator.”

    Much of the story covered Kavanagh’s audience and why its members find the site so useful. Gubernatorial Communications Director Phil Trounstine, for instance, likes to see at a glance how the governor is doing each day in the press. And Capitol Reporter Ed Mendel, who writes for the San Diego Union Tribune, likes seeing his stories get exposure that they otherwise wouldn’t get.

     The story also described Kavanagh’s working day, which begins at 5:30 a.m. and is two to five hours long. It also noted that the ads on the page barely cover Kavanagh’s costs.

     LaMar’s story skipped the fact (because few newspaper readers would care) that Kavanagh’s daily reading of so many state government stories has made him a connoisseur of the Capitol press corps’ reporting and writing skills.

    How would he compare its two most prominent columnists, George Skelton of the LA Times and Dan Walters of the Sacramento Bee?

     According to Kavanagh, no one comes closer to uncovering the soul of a story than Skelton, and no one knows what’s happening in the Capitol hallways better than Walters.

     What about Kavanagh’s other activities, the political commentary, media training and public speaking? They continue, he replied, and are even expanding a bit. Currently, he charges $250 for a speech. But book soon. At the rate he’s going, the price is likely to rise.