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Newspaper endorsements of candidates for president are flying hot and heavy these days, which brings up the inevitable question of whether such endorsements matter.
Of course they do. Just not in the way most people think.
You can look at polling numbers and try to determine whether people’s minds are swayed by an endorsement in the local press. (Or ignore polling numbers, as I argued.)
But as someone who wrote editorials for many years, including far too many political endorsements than I care to count, I can assure you the influence of the hometown newspaper works against candidates as much as it works for them.
That’s probably truer than ever now when there is such a palpable disdain for both the media and the establishment.
While endorsement editorials are written with the idea of persuading voters, they’re really more about providing a concise analysis of the candidates and issues. And they reveal the priorities of the newspaper’s editorial board.
That’s why endorsements matter. The best ones clarify, focus and define the issues being debated in the election. They arrive at a conclusion, and they show the thinking that formed it.
In that way, they help voters think through those issues themselves and decide if the conclusion — vote for Candidate Jones, instead of Candidate Smith — was valid. If not, why not?
Newspapers need to be leaders in their community, and they are poised to fulfill that role in election season for several reasons.
- They have vast resources of information and people trained to examine and digest it.
- Editorial boards often get to meet and question all the candidates in person, something few individual voters get to do.
- They should have historical perspective and insight, having gone through this process every other year with various offices.
Therefore, newspapers have a responsibility and obligation to use those tools and work through a recommendation. Influencing is great; educating is better.
I’ve often said, the best way to examine a newspaper’s coverage of an issue is to try to write an editorial based on it. Do I have all the relevant facts to make a judgment based on what I’ve read? Can I see the bias, the competing interests, the potential consequences? In short, do the news stories do the job of explaining exactly how this affects me and my community?
If so, I can usually form a strong opinion. If not, then more work needs to be done. It was always a great tool for me, as an editor, to try to sit down and write an editorial based solely on what we had reported. It often led me to wonder, ‘Why don’t we know this?’ Which led to another news story the next day.
As I noted, readers can also learn a great deal about the priorities of the newspaper’s editorial board — usually a couple of editors, publisher, and some other executives, perhaps a community representative or two — when they read endorsements.
For example, in Nevada, while national debates swirl over immigration, abortion, gun control and a host of other topics, an editorial board may decide that gaming, mining and labor matters are still more important on the local level.
Endorsements make the case and let the reader decide. That’s why they will always matter.
