Central Washington's concerns will get statewide airing

The production crew from TVW rolls into town Monday morning to begin our most ambitious schedule yet of videotaped endorsement interviews.

The taping crew will be on hand over the next four weeks to record all 11 joint interviews by the Yakima Herald-Republic's Editorial Board with candidates for statewide office and representatives for and against the three initiatives that will be on the November ballot.

Those recorded hourlong interviews then will be available on both TVW, the state's public access television network that broadcasts from Olympia, and at yakimaherald.com.

This will be the fourth year we've partnered with TVW to present Editorial Board endorsement interviews, and the offerings have grown a little each year.

The process actually started in 2004, relatively late in the election season when the program manager for TVW asked if we would allow a TVW crew to tape our interviews with statewide candidates. We were intrigued with the idea, but we just couldn't put it all together in time.

TVW's Mike Bay came back to us with a similar request in 2005: If we were doing editorial endorsement interviews on the statewide initiatives, could TVW tape those?

The members of our Editorial Board who take part in endorsement interviews -- publisher Mike Shepard, editorial page editor Bill Lee and I -- shared some concern that having a camera present would change the way we interview, or would change the way those being interviewed react.

But there was a more important issue at play: In a wide variety of editorial opinions over the years, we have taken state government and others to task for having too narrow a view of Washington. Too often, it has seemed to us, the west-side perspective -- in the Legislature, in Olympia bureaucracy, and, yes, on TVW -- had dominated the state's political debate. We have fretted in any number of editorials that the east side of the mountains is often neglected if not completely forgotten when statewide issues are discussed.

With that as our history, it didn't seem fair to turn down an offer that would give statewide TVW viewers the perspective of three Central Washington residents on those ballot measures.

After that small start in 2005, we invited TVW to record and televise endorsement interviews of candidates in 2006 and 2007, as well as the just-completed 2008 primary election.

But the 2008 general election, with candidates for all statewide offices and three statewide initiatives on the ballot, will be the real test.

Through the rest of September, the two candidates for each contested office will meet with Mike, Bill and me in hourlong discussions that will be televised on TVW beginning this week and then will be available at yakimaherald.com and on TVW.org.

We will meet with the two candidates for each of these statewide offices: attorney general, auditor, insurance commissioner, lands commissioner, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, superintendent of public instruction and treasurer.

We will not be meeting in a side-by-side interview with gubernatorial candidates Chris Gregoire and Dino Rossi because they will be in Yakima for a debate Oct. 1, which will be televised statewide. We view that public session as a substitute for the Editorial Board interview.

We will also meet with representatives on both sides of the issues behind Initiative 985 (funding for traffic congestion relief), I-1000 (assisted suicide) and I-1029 (certification for long-term care workers)

As the schedule of broadcasts is available, we'll include it on the Opinion page. You can also check the upcoming schedule on TVW.org.

And while it may not be the most scintillating TV -- it is, after all, public access television -- we hope the broadcasts provide viewers elsewhere in the state a different view of issues of concern to us. And we hope Herald-Republic readers will find it an interesting inside look at how the Editorial Board operates.

The TVW-televised interviews of candidates in statewide races will not be the only ones we do this election season.

The Editorial Board also will meet with candidates for contested local races in the same kind of hourlong side-by-side interviews.

Those interviews will all be audiotaped and will be available to listen to at yakimaherald.com.

The final step, of course, is that each interview will lead to an endorsement editorial that will be published before ballots are made available in mid-October. We'll publish a schedule of upcoming endorsements on the Opinion page as soon as it's finalized.

Monthly magazine helps keep us Spry

Make sure you pick up Monday's newspaper to check out "Spry," a new magazine available for readers on the second Monday of each month.

Described as America's newest health and wellness magazine, Spry's mission is to "share the joy, the power, and the rewards of healthy living -- and help you make it happen."

Check it out, and let me know what you think.

* Sarah Jenkins is editor of the Yakima Herald-Republic. If you have a question or concern, you can reach her at 577-7703; P.O. Box 9668, Yakima WA 98909; or sjenkins@yakimaherald.com. You can also comment on this column in the "Inside the Newsroom" blog, at editor.yakimablogs.com.

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