Home > View from the Newsroom > Archives > 2008 > October > 28 > Entry
Election season
OK, I don’t know how long it’s been since I posted here. I could check but that wouldn’t change the fact that it’s been way too long. One of the keys to blogging I tell people is that it has to be done with regularity. And they might logically ask just what standing I have to say that. The answer is I don’t.
But I will try harder.
Election seasons are always interesting times for newspapers. Every candidate in the world wants to talk to us every time they come to town. Every local candidate says the same things over and over at debate after debate. They expect, and for the most part we comply, that all of their debates and public appearances get coverage in their local newspaper.
Our fax machine is clogged with press releases from dozens of candidates and seemingly hundreds of issues groups, as are our e-mail boxes.
Just in the past two hours I’ve received e-mails telling me who to vote for if I want good health care, independents have increased their support for Obama, a certain Democratic senator from Colorado plans a conference call to drum up support for Obama, celebrities have joined forces to make sure poor people vote, and others. Judging by that group, I’d say the left side of the spectrum is more active this afternoon than the right. Maybe my political writers, who get more of this stuff than I do, have heard from the other side today.
The other thing that happens in newsrooms every two years in the fall is that we get accused of favoring one side or another. This year has been no exception. The accusations, without fail, come from partisans and for the most part have little basis in reality. We get them from all sides. (That’s of some comfort.) I think there really are people out there who count how many column inches we give to every candidate and every side of every issue. And if they think their guy is not getting as much as the other guy, or if they think we didn’t buy into their spin the way we should have, they are anything but bashful telling us about it. That’s what partisans do, either because they’re paid to, or they fervently believe in their candidates or causes.
Here’s a little secret. We don’t count column inches and make sure that every candidate gets the same amount. Yes, there may be weeks in which one side gets more coverage than the other. But at the end of election day, when we do our post-mortems on coverage, we generally find that the coverage was fair. We will probably look back and say maybe we should have done this, or shouldn’t have done that. But the totality of the coverage served our readers well. I’ve seen nothing this year, despite the complaints and sniping from some quarters, that makes me think anything is out of the ordinary.
Some candidates and some issues are more serious than others, and they will get more coverage. Many years ago there was a perennial Grand Junction City Council candidate who never garnered more than 1 or 2 percent of the vote. We didn’t cover him much because he never had anything to say. Had, for some bad reason, we decided to give him as much space in the newspaper as his more serious opponents it would have made his candidacy appear much more credible than it was. Those are judgment calls we have to make.
But only for another week. I, for one, will be glad when it’s over.
Comments
By Laurena
October 30, 2008 5:12 PM | Link to this
Amen.