10 Questions allows voter, candidate interaction

Political candidates have a history of answering people waving microphones or fat contribution checks first and everyone else last.

Now everyday Nevadans have a new way to get the attention of candidates seeking the top political offices.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal and the Personal Democracy Forum, in association with Google and YouTube, are providing a new tool that will let people ask their own questions and give candidates time and space to provide in-depth answers.

The project, with funding by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, is an online forum called 10 Questions. It collects questions via the Internet, lets people vote to determine which questions they most want answered, and encourages candidates to respond.

"We have a culture that glorifies sound bites over substance, and we are trying to get beyond it," said Daniel Teweles, 10 Questions project leader for the Personal Democracy Forum.

The project covers campaigns in 11 states, with the Nevada version posted at www.lvrj.com/politics/10questions/html and covering races for U.S. Senate, governor and the Third Congressional District.

People have until Sept. 14 to post questions, either by writing them or uploading video. During that time, readers and viewers can vote on the questions they most want candidates to answer.

On Sept. 15 the top 10 questions will be posted. Candidates will have until Oct. 15 to respond on the site.

Review-Journal Editor Thomas Mitchell said the 10 Questions forum is a chance for readers and candidates to delve more deeply into the issues than newspaper, television and radio coverage can accommodate.

"We're putting on our website more political information than ever before," Mitchell said. "Electrons are virtually free, newsprint is not."

Tonya Carpenter, director of new media development for the Review-Journal, said the newspaper website is a good place to link to the forum because it receives heavy traffic from people interested in politics and campaigns.

The website, Carpenter said, receives more than 10 million page views per month from approximately 2 million unique visitors.

"Our partnership with 10 Questions provides us an opportunity to allow our readers to interact directly with the candidates who seek to represent them," Carpenter said. "We value openness and access, and this affords us yet another avenue to achieve that goal."

Currently 10 Questions includes spots to post questions to the Democratic and Republican candidates in the top three Nevada races, but Teweles said minor party candidates in those races could be added.

"The end goal is really to provide for a more robust democracy," Teweles said. "If it is someone who has a real stake in the election and is making a go of it, we will absolutely feature them."

During the 2008 election cycle, Personal Democracy Forum entered into partnerships with The New York Times editorial board and MSNBC, ventures generating nearly 150,000 votes on videos with questions for presidential candidates.

Media partners for the 2010 incarnation include the San Francisco Chronicle, the Miami Herald and Politico.

Stephen Bates, a professor of journalism at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said 10 Questions forums are a chance for people who want more than they can learn from the daily news but in a format that isn't controlled by a campaign.

"The press seems to be kind of consumed by horse race journalism and scandals," Bates said. "Anything that gets more issue information out there is terrific."

Contact reporter Benjamin Spillman at bspillman@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3861.