Among the reforms the Working Group recommends:
- Expanding the role of social media and including more diverse media outlets to host the debates, as well as enlarging the pool of moderators to include print journalists, retired judges and other experts, instead of solely relying on television journalists;
- Eliminating on-site audiences for debates other than a town hall style debate. The Working Group noted that the Kennedy-‐Nixon debates in 1960 are widely regarded as among the more successful debates, and had small studio audiences;
- Revising the debate timetable to take into account the rise of early voting;
- Employing a “chess clock” model to encourage more substantive answers and allow the candidates to go into greater depth on issues that are important to them.
Authors
Chaired by Anita Dunn and Beth Myers, the Annenberg Debate Reform Working Group included: Robert Barnett, Bob Bauer, Joel Benenson, Charles Black, Rick Davis, Benjamin Ginsberg, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Ron Klain, Neil Newhouse, Zac Moffatt, Jim Perry, Joe Rospars, Michael Sheehan and Stuart Stevens.
