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Friday, May 9, 2008
It’s a political year
Newspaper editors and political reporters don’t need a calendar to tell them that it’s an even-numbered year. Even-numbered years are election years. We can tell that because those are the years when we get complaints from politicians and their handlers. It’s as predictable as Rick Wagner staking out a position to the right of just about everybody else.
We got a couple this week, and I think they are instructive. One was nothing more than a political handler trying to bully a reporter, the other a legitimate question about why we failed to do something. One was ugly, the other a genuine discussion between people who saw the same thing differently.
First the ugly.
Early in the week Democratic Senate candidate Mark Udall proposed the government quit stockpiling gas in the strategic petroleum reserve.
Reporter Mike Saccone, as any good reporter would do, called Udall’s opponent to get a response. Republican Bob Schaffer is very seldom available. He called Dick Wadhams, Schaffer’s campaign manager. I don’t think he ever even got to tell Wadhams why he was calling. The minute Wadhams got on the phone he launched into Mike, telling him he was a biased reporter, that he’s taken cheap shots at Schaffer and asking when we were going to do the same thing to Udall. I listened to the tape of the conversation. Mike seldom got to complete a question. Every time he tried Wadhams interrupted with yet another complaint about Mike and/or our coverage. He did manage to ask Wadhams for specific instances of biased reporting or cheap shots and Wadhams provided none.
The exchange was amusing. I don’t know what Wadhams was trying to accomplish other than to try to get our reporter to go easier on his candidate in future stories. Whatever it was it will have no effect whatsoever on how we cover the Senate race. We’ll continue to cover it as completely and fairly as possible.
Then there is Mesa County commissioner candidate Jim Doody, a pol with much less experience than Dick Wadhams, but one who chooses not to come out guns-ablazing when he doesn’t like something we did - or in this case didn’t do - but instead just wants an explanation.
Former state representative Matt Smith very publicly helped Doody gather signatures for Doody’s candidacy petition on Tuesday and we had nothing in the paper about it. We had a reporter and a photographer there and the reporter returned and wrote a long, and very good feature story about the event. We opted not to run it. Doody politely asked why. Here’s my response and Doody’s:
“Jim,
“The call to not run anything today was ultimately mine, and it came down to whether we thought it was news. The story as written was a feature, and a very good feature. The problem was that had we run it, then we would have been committed to doing the same thing for every candidate in that race. Had we not, readers might perceive the story to be nothing more than an effort on the part of The Daily Sentinel to drum up support for your candidacy. We decided we didn’t want to commit to doing more stories about that race at this time. We will do stories about all the candidates when there are significant dates looming, i.e., the deadline for filing petitions, the primary election, etc. It’s a problem we run into virtually every election cycle, and it is, admittedly, difficult. Just as I’d hope readers wouldn’t read any institutional support for your candidacy had we done a story, I hope you don’t think that our lack of a story means we are opposed to your candidacy. We haven’t taken a position on your candidacy, and, on the news pages, won’t. I hope that answers your question. Please feel free to get in touch with me if you’d like to discuss it further.”
“Denny -
“Thank you for your reply. Though I disagree with your logic I respect your professional opinion regarding local politics and the high standards you hold for the Daily Sentinel. I personally do not consider myself as a candidate (either does my opponent) just an aspiring one that may happen when I obtain enough signatures to get on the ballot. I do believe there is reportable news when a prominent person (Matt Smith) in the community wants to publicly announce his endorsement of another who has distinct differences about what our future could hold.”
We weren’t quite sure whether Matt Smith had formally made an endorsement on Tuesday, and that’s why we ran nothing. We typically run a brief when a candidate gets an endorsement. On second thought we decided that Matt did indeed endorse Doody and we ran that brief today.
Dealing with rants from handlers like Dick Wadhams goes with the territory of being in the newspaper business. But it’s a lot easier to deal with the likes of Jim Doody.
