Home > View from the Newsroom > Archives > 2008 > May > 15 > Entry
Schaffer’s mountain
Here’s a common question reporters get when they’re working on a story and ask a questions that the interviewee doesn’t particularly like: “Who told you that?”
More often than not we don’t mind answering the question. Occasionally we’ve agreed not to divulge that information for one reason or another, so we don’t.
The question really goes to motive. The person in the uncomfortable position is often quick to add that the instigator of the story has some ax to grind or is himself or herself not without a set of problems. That is often true.
We know that when people call us with story ideas they don’t do so with the interests of Daily Sentinel/GJSentinel.com readers utmost in their minds. They almost always have a personal agenda. The question we must always ask then, is this: Is the information a story? Is it something that our readers will find valuable? If we answer that in the affirmative we pursue it, if not, we don’t.
So Wednesday, when a left-wing Colorado political blog called and said we should check out Republican Senate candidate Bob Schaffer’s newest television ad, which features Schaffer talking about Pike’s Peak with a picture of Mount McKinley in Alaska as a backdrop, he didn’t have our readers in mind. What he had in mind was embarrassing the Schaffer campaign.
But we, and I suspect a lot of other Colorado media outlets, decided it was a story our readers would find interesting.
You can bet the Schaffer people are looking for some misstep on the part of Democrat Mark Udall so they, too, can give us a call.
We’ll be here.
Comments
By Janet Blackman
May 22, 2008 3:00 PM | Link to this
The Udall campaign is really scraping to find something to embarrass Bob Schaffer. Talk about nit-picking!! This is ridiculous!