Rieder: Moving beyond insider coverage of D.C.

New Meet the Press host Chuck Todd has a good idea that would be valuable not only for his program but for journalism in general.

As he tries to reinvent and re-energize the venerable but ratings-challenged Sunday-morning staple, Todd plans to move away from the show's inside-the-Beltway feel. He told my colleague Roger Yu that he will venture outside of the Washington bubble to do some reporting from the heartland. The program, he says, doesn't have to be so entrenched in Washington.

In his debut Sunday, he launched a new segment called Who Needs Washington? in which he interviewed three mayors about their local initiatives. And he says he wants to emphasize more issues that resonate with middle-class Americans, as opposed to D.C. insiders.

All of that sounds good for Meet the Press. But a wider application of this approach could pay huge dividends.

Too much of our political dialogue revolves around insider issues that have little to do with the concerns and hopes of ordinary Americans. And that's true not only on the Sunday network talk shows but on cable and a variety of politically oriented websites.

Often their narrow nuggets gain momentum as they ricochet among these platforms and, fueled by social media, muscle their way into news outlets with broader focuses and into the political conversation.

A key role is played by Twitter, and isn't it always?

I think of it as the Politicoization of political coverage. Politico, of course, is the very successful website (with a lucrative print accoutrement) that makes a living reporting on all things D.C. That means important stuff, middling flaps and totally inconsequential fluff.

Nothing wrong with that. That's what Politico, launched in 2007, does. The problem comes when the flimsiest items segue into the mainstream from Politico and other political sites and from social media. While there's often value in responding to social media paroxysms, not all social media paroxysms are created equal.

Take the late August dust-up that inevitably came to be known as Tanghazi. When he held a press conference to discuss events in Syria and Ukraine, President Obama had the temerity show up for the occasion in a tan suit.

The outrage was palpable. Not over the president's pronouncements, but over his sartorial choice. The Twitterverse lit up with more than 15,000 tweets, many of them highly critical of Obama for discussing serious subjects in such an un-serious outfit. (Best of all the tweets: "The audacity of taupe," from Jared Keller of start-up MicNews.) The tweets in turn provoked numerous news stories, as did the ludicrous outburst by Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., who, in a rant about many aspects of the president's performance, fulminated, "For him to walk out — I'm not trying to be trivial here — in a light suit, light tan suit ..."

It's easy to see how this nonsense attracted so much attention in today's media and political landscapes. But step back just a little and it's painfully obvious how ridiculous it is. With so many important issues out there, we're spending so much energy on this?

Of course, there are times when symbolism matters. Obama was remarkably tone-deaf when he deplored the beheading of freelance American journalist James Wright Foley, then headed for the golf course. That was big-time insensitive. To his credit, he admitted the error in his interview with Todd Sunday on Meet the Press.

The preoccupation with the trivial has taken hold quite powerfully, and it's unlikely to go away anytime soon. But congratulations to Todd for taking a step in the right direction. If he can significantly widen the focus of Meet the Press, that's progress.