By Karen Kasler
The Statehouse News Bureau celebrates its 30th anniversary this August. In those three decades, the journalists of the Statehouse News Bureau have put together hundreds of stories from thousands of hours of tape. We’ve followed countless hours of debates and hearings, and documented the progress of dozens upon dozens of bills. We three reporters at the Bureau now have more than 70 years of combined experience in radio and in television and online. Bill Cohen has been covering the Statehouse since 1976, working for WOSU-AM before being hired to lead the Bureau. Jo Ingles joined in 1999, and I arrived from Cleveland in 2004. Together, we’ve won more than 50 awards in just the last six years. Bill was honored by the Ohio Associated Press Broadcasters a few years ago with the Carl Day Award, which recognizes his years in the business and his commitment to the Columbus community. Jo is writing for Columbus Monthly magazine. And I’m pleased to write that our TV show The State of Ohio, which I host and produce, was nominated for a regional Emmy.
The idea for the Statehouse News Bureau began during the deadly Blizzard of 1978, the worst winter storm in Ohio’s history. Public stations broadcast a news conference with Gov. Jim Rhodes over phone lines to listeners, who learned that National Guard members would be clearing roads and using helicopters to rescue stranded drivers and transport medical personnel to hospitals. Bill Cohen, then at WOSU, anchored that news conference, and station managers realized that pooling resources to hire reporters based at the Statehouse following state government each day would be a valuable public service.
More than a dozen reporters have worked at the Bureau since 1980. The list includes NPR anchor and reporter Brian Naylor and NPR’s newest business reporter, Tamara Keith. Keith worked at the Bureau in 2004, before moving on to cover Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in Sacramento. She says she was amazed by the access Ohio reporters have to state officials, and talks of the somewhat surreal experience of riding on a bale of hay around the Ohio State Fair with Gov. Bob Taft, as he yelled “Good morning, chickens!” when passing the poultry barn. Other Bureau reporters moved on to commercial outlets. Jim Otte, who covers western Ohio for WHIO-TV, was with the Bureau from 1982 to 1988. He describes working at the Statehouse as the only way to cover Ohio political issues, because it’s “like being the cop on the beat.” He says he remembers when the reporters got their first computers, “which were the size of a car engine and had the memory of a two year old.” And he adds, “The technology is dramatically different, but the quality of the reporting remains the same.”
The Bureau has covered every statewide election since its inception, and has followed dozens of battles over budgets, bills and ballot issues. We’ve covered presidential visits, and found the stories in seemingly endless committee meetings and speeches. All of us have witnessed executions and have followed the controversies over Ohio’s death penalty, including in 2006, when Joseph Clark sat up halfway through his execution to say that the drugs weren’t working. We were there when Bob Taft became the first Ohio governor to be convicted in office, as he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor ethics charges. All of us have participated in candidate debates, which have led to some memorable exchanges – including the one four years ago in which Ken Blackwell said Ted Strickland’s decision not to vote on a certain Congressional resolution amounted to a tacit support of sex between adults and children.
Bill remembers the 1993 deadly riot at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville as “dramatic but frustrating,” as reporters were kept far away from the prison where raging inmates were holding hostages inside. Jo spent most of a year following the Marc Dann sexual harassment scandal, which she notes had “all of the elements of a good novel.” It included revelations of state money invested in rare coins and Beanie Babies, stories of fraternity-style parties at the home of the state’s Attorney General, who had been a nearly-unknown state Senator two years before, and a confession of an extramarital affair with a staffer at a live press conference. Some of my favorite moments have been recorded by our TV cameras - for example, when I got a private tour of the Governor’s Residence two years ago, and this year when I interviewed former Congressman Jim Traficant. But I’ve also had a great time outside the political realm. Last year I produced a series on businesses and charitable groups making money with “green” ideas such as recycling batteries and repurposing household fixtures.
As other news outlets have been cutting back their staffs and their coverage at the Statehouse, we continue to be the only fulltime broadcast journalists assigned to report on what’s happening with state government on a daily basis. And our experience and institutional memory is tested all the time. Bill Cohen has a vast collection of thousands of campaign buttons and pieces of paraphernalia. And we notice the same names come back over and over – sometimes it’s the politician who returns, but sometimes it’s his spouse, her child or another family member. And when the Bureau was founded in 1980, the major issues on the campaign literature and in the headlines were high unemployment, budget shortfalls, school funding, campaign financing and high speed trains. As Bill Cohen puts it, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”