And the polls say: Dean Jamieson is out in front

The Annenberg dean wearsThe Annenberg dean wearsmany coloirful hats - butThe Annenberg dean wearsmany coloirful hats - butsays her life is still 'boring.' Sitting in her office cluttered with binders of reports, boxes of videotapes and piles of newspapers, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, dean of the Annenberg School for Communication, called her life "boring." Many of her colleagues would disagree with that description of the extremely high-profile professor and researcher, whose name is associated with the presidential campaign almost as often as the candidates themselves. When newspaper reporters, television anchors and radio talk show hosts need a political communications expert, they often turn to Jamieson first. On one Wednesday afternoon two weeks before the election, Jamieson first found herself performing a different role -- that of teacher. After a booked morning and no time for lunch, she held an office hour beginning at 1 p.m., immediately followed by her three-hour undergraduate lecture course, "Introduction to Political Communication." But her various roles immediately begin to converge, as she brought her ongoing research "back to the undergraduate classroom." Jamieson spent 45 minutes speaking informally to the filled lecture hall about aspects of the current presidential campaign. "They learned something they could not learn anywhere else in the country," she said, explaining why she began her lecture the way she did. Immediately after class, at about 4:45 p.m., Jamieson switched hats again -- to that of dean -- when she spoke at the Undergraduate Convocation for Communications majors. But she had to leave before the convocation ended. A cab ride to 4th and Market streets later, she was at the WFXN-TV (Channel 29) studios to do a live remote interview for PBS's The News Hours with Jim Lehrer. In her fifth appearance on the show since the party conventions, she discussed several campaign advertisements, adding that the "level of facticity," has dropped with this presidential campaign's ads. "One should be ethical in an ad about ethics," she said several times, adding that false ads are "unworthy of a presidential campaign." Afterward, during the ride back to Penn, Jamieson explained that she had stressed the soundbite of "ethics, ethically," during the show, because "if you can create a chorus? you can create the pressure on the candidates" to pull false advertisements. Jamieson noted that unlike in 1992 when she signed a contract to appear exclusively for 20 minutes a week on Bill Moyer's PBS show, she has chosen to expand her audience this year by appearing on a variety of programs. But immediately after the 15-minute Leher segment, she was back on campus to take on her role of political communications researcher --Eone she has held since 1970 -- for a team meeting with the graduate students who lead her current research project. The six graduate students and 11 undergraduates that form the group create and send reports on the quality of the current campaign discourse to 275 media sources, including television news shows, periodicals and daily newspapers. "We're trying to reform how they cover the world," she said. The group is committed to providing only one report each week for the eight weeks before the election, but Jamieson said they have been "over-achievers" and have already published 13 reports on campaign discourse. She said the project has showed the group "how to do research under extreme pressure." Jamieson also noted that the reports have advantages for her personally -- by providing information weekly, they decrease the need for reporters to call her directly. Despite the significant respite in calls, Jamieson admitted that she is still unable to take all of the media calls her office receives. At the 7 p.m. research group meeting, Jamieson and her team discussed the students' individual sections of the research and what work remained before tomorrow's election. Jamieson said she does the "fact check" portion of the reports, which compares the candidates' statements with the correct information, because she knows the public policy literature involved. She works with the other reports as an advisor to the graduate students, through "back and forth rewriting" and then final editing. At 7:45 p.m., Jamieson began to prepare to go home, where, the self-professed "news junkie" admitted, she spends much of her time waiting for and then taping new campaign ads.

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