In recent months, North Country Public Radio has struggled to cover the activities of North Country Congresswoman Elise Stefanik.

Our reporters are rarely able to reach the Congresswoman in a timely way for interviews about her re-election campaign, about her activities representing the 21st district, or about developments in Washington.

Her official spokespeople often don’t respond to questions. We often can't learn in advance where Stefanik will be.

Other journalists in the region say they also find it increasingly difficult to provide timely, factual coverage of Stefanik.

A case study in access: Questions, no response

Weeks passed and we resubmitted the request twice, with no response of any kind from Stefanik’s office Back in mid-August, North Country Public Radio sent an email to Congresswoman Stefanik’s office, asking for an interview to talk about President Trump’s criticism of the Justice Department and his decision to strip former top U.S. intelligence officials of their security clearances.

This subject matters to Stefanik. She holds a crucial oversight role on the House Intelligence Committee. In our email, we detailed the exact questions we wanted to ask. We got no answer.

Weeks passed and we resubmitted the request twice, with no response of any kind from Stefanik’s office.

Finally, September 14, nearly a month after we asked to talk with the congresswoman, her official spokesman Tom Flanagin sent a brief email. He offered links to Stefanik’s past comments. No response to the request for an interview, no answers to our detailed questions.

NCPR has also sent repeated requests to her campaign spokesman Lenny Alcivar asking for an interview about her re-election bid and requesting a detailed schedule so that we could meet with her on the trail to ask questions and watch her interacting with voters.

We received brief emailed responses from Alcivar offering his own views and comments, providing no access to Stefanik, no quotes from her, or opportunities to ask her questions. Also, no calendar of events, no schedule of her public activities.

In talking with other journalists covering Stefanik’s activities we found our experience isn’t unique.

Other journalists cite similar experiences

He says Stefanik’s strategy for dealing with the media differs sharply from Republican McHugh and Democrat Owens, who held the seat before her.

Peter Crowley, managing editor at the Adirondack Daily Enterprise, sees this much the same way. He says Owens and McHugh had press people, but their roles were more casual. They served less as gatekeepers and more as facilitators for journalists trying to ask questions.

"Certainly, talking to Elise Stefanik in person is a little more rare and a big deal I guess than it was," Crowley said. "It's not as common."

Michael Goot writes about politics for the Glens Falls Post Star. He says following Stefanik is more difficult than other politicians he’s covered in the past.

"When I worked for a paper in New Hampshire, I covered some presidential candidates and when they were on the stump they would give you a good deal of access because they wanted to get their message out. Stefanik seems like she's very kind of managed, in terms very controlled, how much access they want to give you and what talking points they want to stress."

This matters, Goot says, on specific stories where he’s trying to give readers clear, factual and timely information. He cites the example of a story he was reporting on immigration.

"I had kind of a nuanced question I wanted to ask on something that came up that day. All I got back was sort of a canned quote that I got from a previous immigration story. It didn't say too much about the specific thing I wanted to ask."

One reporter notes better access: "It's all a bit of a process."

It’s important to note that some reporters in the region say they are comfortable with their level of access to Stefanik. Aaron Cerbone is the lead political reporter at the Adirondack Daily Enterprise.

"It's all a bit of a process," he said. "I call her, we get about ten minutes usually to talk. There's probably about one time a month that I call her up to talk about a story. She makes time to talk about some very complicated subjects."

Stefanik's approach a new normal?

Scott Atkinson, news director at WWNY TV says he thinks Stefanik’s approach to the media, her strategic decisions about which reporters to talk to and when may be the new normal for politicians.

He also thinks more and more elected officials will use social media rather than the press to talk with voters. "Congresswoman Stefanik and people like her have learned how to route around us. They understand they can go on Facebook, they can go on twitter, they can do paid advertising and they can minimize their exposure to unpredictable questions."

But Atkinson says it’s important for journalists to keep trying. Stefanik is a rising star in the Republican Party. She holds key assignments on the Armed Services and Intelligence Committees. Her views and her votes affect a lot of people’s lives, from soldiers at Fort Drum to women seeking reproductive services.

"We need to know from the Congresswoman a lot more finely than we do in many cases what she really believes about different issues and different things that are going on in Washington," Atkinson said.