By Teresa Wiltz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 25, 2008

News networks have been aligning themselves politically for some time -- Fox News to the right, MSNBC more and more to the left. And now, some niche networks are about to take an even more personal approach to covering the conventions.

In an online contest, a young Republican and a young Democrat, each armed with a mike and a lot of enthusiasm, beat out 148 other would-be reporters for the chance to work as "embeds" at their respective party conventions for Sí TV, a fledgling English-language network geared toward young Latinos.

The Republican, Michael Monrroy, a 19-year-old sophomore at American University, and the Democrat, Wendy Carrillo, 27, an East L.A. radio personality, will be part of the latest thing in convention coverage: news aimed at specific ages, genders and ethnicities.

TV One, an African American network based in Silver Spring, is forgoing the GOP convention to focus exclusively on the Democrats. MTV will focus on youth initiatives and Iraq, reflecting a recent poll in which viewers said their No. 1 concern is the war. And Spike TV, cable's bastion of unfettered testosterone, plans to send the buxom Obama Girl -- the YouTube sensation who lip-synced about her crush on the candidate -- to cover the Democratic convention for its online operations.

Not surprisingly, she'll be a no-show at the Republican convention.

Is this another example of the balkanization of television? Or does it indicate something deeper -- the balkanization of American thought and culture?

"In the past, in the days of the three networks, it was necessary to give off the impression of being nonpartisan," says Todd Boyd, professor of cinematic studies at the University of Southern California. "In the world of television, satellite, pay cable today, the desire or need to appear nonpartisan is no longer necessary.

"With so many channels speaking to so many interests," he continues, "you are from the very beginning indicating that you are partisan." Case study No. 1: Johnathan Rodgers, CEO of TV One, sees his convention coverage as a "celebration" of a historic event: the first time an African American will be nominated for president by a major political party. TV One, he says, is not a news network -- it's devoted exclusively to covering the African American experience for a viewership that is 93 percent black.

"Our mission is to celebrate African American culture and chronicle African American achievement," Rodgers said. "If Colin Powell were the Republican nominee, we would be covering that convention. For us, it's not about party. It's the individual."

Still, that programming decision raised some eyebrows. Conservative bloggers decried it as "racist"; Jay Leno cracked on "The Tonight Show" that black Republicans were particularly incensed -- "both of them."

Starting today, when the Democratic convention opens, TV One will go live, with reporting by Arthur Fennell, former president of the National Association of Black Journalists, and activist Joe Madison, who bills himself as "The Black Eagle." Each evening's coverage will be followed by a live, hour-long "afterparty" hosted by author and sociology professor Michael Eric Dyson, a fervent Obama supporter, and his wife, the Rev. Marcia Dyson, an avowed Hillaryite, with many other black luminaries, including the Rev. Al Sharpton and radio personality Huggy Low Down.

"Nobody's ever nonpartisan," Michael Eric Dyson says. "The best you can hope for is to put your bias on the table. You can't transcend your interests. But you've got to let fairness come in.

"So yeah, we're partisan -- partisan in the sense that we're interested in this black man's future because our future is tied to him. The complaints that 'you're covering one convention and not the other' misses the racial politics of American culture."

Over at Sí TV, network suits thought there would be no better way to engage its viewership, which skews to the young and is English-dominant, than to send two viewers. The network, available in about 20 million homes, fielded 150 video submissions in its contest, and more than 50,000 votes were tallied at VotoLatino.org, a voter advocacy group co-founded by actress Rosario Dawson.

"We wanted to show two sides of the coin and give a very personal account of [the conventions]," says Lisa Black, senior vice president of marketing and digital media for the four-year-old network.

Other entertainment networks with news divisions -- MTV, Black Entertainment Television, Univision, Telemundo -- plan to provide varying amounts of live convention coverage. Univision and Telemundo will air both nominees' acceptance speeches live, with simultaneous translation. Last week, BET's news division decided to beef up its live coverage of the Democrats. It's still mulling whether to take the Republicans live.

"Our focus is to make sure that our audience sees both conventions," says Jeff Johnson, host of BET's weekly news program "The Truth With Jeff Johnson." "How we do that will be determined by the access we get."

The Democrats, he said, have given BET lots of access; both Obama and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton sat down for interviews for 30-minute specials. "We have been attempting to get a sit-down with McCain since at least November," he says, adding, "We're in real trouble if we go on the air and we don't have anyone to talk to."

Meanwhile, as part of MTV's "Choose or Lose" campaign, street reporters will prowl both conventions, carrying Nokia N95 phones, transmitting the action on the Internet. The network also will air daily news coverage on all its channels and will feature analysis and commentary on its popular video countdown show, "TRL."

"We're not CNN, and we're not Fox News, and we're not MSNBC, and we don't pretend to be," says Ocean MacAdams, senior vice president of MTV News. "They're dedicated to blanket coverage. For us, it's specific issues and stories that we want to cover that break through to our audience."

Adds the MTV personality known only as Sway: "We serve as a conduit to . . . a demographic that doesn't get to speak out. That's always been our niche."