News from the Hill

What the reporter wanted to know was deceptively simple: How did the four members of Montana's congressional delegation earn their pay the previous week? The offices of three of the legislators responded, but that of the fourth, Senator Lee Metcalf, did not. Next time an answer may be forthcoming. The tiny Livingston, Mont., Enterprise (circ. 3,000) learned of Metcalfs taciturnity from the Capitol Hill News Service, a new and unusual press bureau dedicated to covering some Congressmen as they have never been covered before. In a snappish editorial the Enterprise concluded: "If we elect them, they ought to be able to tell us a little about what they're doing. If Senator Metcalf, or anyone else, isn't doing anything, we ought to know that too."

The creation of Attorney Peter Gruenstein, 26, CHNS was launched last September on a $40,000 grant from Public Citizen Inc., one of Ralph Nader's crusading organizations. Gruenstein had learned the inner workings of Congress during a two-year stint as a Congressman's aide. Abandoning his $24,000-a-year post last winter, he wrote a study for Nader on how the press covers Congress and decided that CHNS could remedy some of the inadequacies.

"Most citizens," says Gruenstein, "get most of their news about their Congressmen from their Congressmen." For financial reasons, only 27% of the U.S. dailies have their own or a shared Washington correspondent. The figures for TV stations (4%) and radio stations (less than 1%) are even more dismal. A.P. and U.P.I, rarely provide close coverage of individual Congressmen. Legislators eagerly fill this vacuum with press releases and canned broadcasts. "Let's face it," Gruenstein says, "a Congressman's nirvana is being able to write a press release and have it printed or broadcast without having the facts checked."

The end to that nirvana for some began with the recruitment of CHNS reporters. Gruenstein interviewed 70 applicants eager to take a "great job and miserable pay." He chose Lauralyn Bellamy, 26, a former staffer of Broadcasting magazine; David Holmberg, 35, an experienced Washington reporter; Chris Matthews, 28, author of several freelance articles on Congress; and Clay Steinman, 23, a former reporter for the Vancouver, Wash., Columbian. Their salaries range from $7,000 to $10,000 a year. Gruenstein, a bachelor with a frugal life-style similar to Nader's, pays himself $8,000.

Local Angles. Five areas with little Washington coverage--West Virginia, Montana, Indiana, Nebraska and the western sector of Pennsylvania--were chosen as CHNS'S pilot targets. Each reporter was assigned to ten or twelve Congressmen from the five states. In late September CHNS began mailing stories with local angles to hundreds of newspapers, radio and TV stations in these areas. It also sent "national" stories on congressional affairs of interest beyond the target areas to a number of publications outside the five states.

One such story earned CHNS considerable publicity--and some notoriety. Bellamy reported on a telephone poll that CHNS had conducted among Senate legislative aides. With 75 of the 100 offices responding, aides named Henry Jackson as the "most effective" Senator, Jacob Javits as the "brightest" and Philip Hart as the Senator with the "most integrity." On the minus side, Senators Mike Gravel, William Scott and Vance Hartke were bunched together as "least effective." Some of the Senators were predictably pleased, others predictably outraged. Some felt that the CHNS polling method had all the reliability of a high school popularity contest. But U.P.I, picked up the story and gave the struggling outfit some badly needed attention.

Other national stories have been meatier and more professional. Gruenstein reported on the extensive use of House recording studios by Congressmen up for reelection. Charging bargain-basement rates for their sophisticated services, these studios are intended to aid Congressmen in communicating with constituents, not give them an all but free ride in preparing campaign commercials. In another story Gruenstein pointed out a similar use of Government printing facilities to turn out campaign literature.

Such earnest digging has also borne fruit in CHNS local stories. Matthews filed an item for papers in Pennsylvania revealing that a reporter for the Scranton Tribune also earned $5,000 a year as a "public relations assistant" to Pennsylvania Representative Joseph Mc-Dade. The Tribune accepted its employee's moonlighting calmly, but McDade sniped that the CHNS disclosure was "the worst story I've seen in ten years."

Initially its service was gratis. But CHNS recently stopped sending out stories free and now has 15 paying subscribers (maximum charge: $50 a week). Gruenstein says that he needs 50 to 80 subscribers if CHNS is to become self-supporting when the Nader money runs out in March; he optimistically foresees a time when CHNS might cover up to 350 of the 535 members of Congress.

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