Steve Harris

At Large candidate Steve Harris's YNN interview is a little different because he's the only candidate in the segment.  If it were me, I would have presented all the interviews this way; the pairings YNN did were artificial and for the most part misleading (see below).

Harris seems to be running on the popular notion that builders and real estate developers have had a disproportional influence on city government.  It's hard to go wrong with that theme.  I tried to find something to say about his comment that developers should "not just think about money;" but he's right.  I hold no hope that his position will prevail among that community, but I don't blame Steve for trying.

Because this is the last of the videos about at-large city council candidates, it's probably OK to comment on YNN's "parallel candidates" style of presentation.  For the most part, I don't think it works.  For one thing, the videos are far too short to develop comparisons and contrasts at more than a superficial level.  There might have been some value in pairing candidates responses to substantive questions, but as near as I could tell, YNN did not ask any substantive questions.  If the purpose of this series was to allow candidates to have their pictures on TV and deliver a couple of sound-bites, then YNN could just as well have had individual segments or put all 16 (15 if Nate Small still didn't want to participate) candidates in one segment.

I don't want to discourage YNN: they've had better election coverage than any other medium; much better than their print competitors.  But there's so much more that should be done.  I'd like to see YNN (or someone) offer 20 minutes of video to any candidate who wants to take advantage of it.  I'd also like to see other formats, but maybe some of them will be covered by the upcoming  candidate forums.  Those forums will be the subject of tomorrow's blog.