Can newspapers fight a two-front war?
By adamg - 10/20/09 - 7:38 am
The Outraged Liberal, who doesn't live in Boston, wonders if the Boston papers could carve out a couple of inches of mayoral coverage to ask Steve Pagliuca about Afghanistan - or Martha Coakley about anything:
... I know circulation and viewership is down and so is staffing, but is it really impossible to cover both the mayoral race that affects about 600,000 people and the Senate primaries that affects the remaining 6 million of us?
Comments
Yes
Yes they can fight a two-front war, but these two elections (Boston mayoral and U.S. Senate special) are queued up in consecutive months.
Wait until November 4th, and then I bet we'll get no end of coverage of the Senate race... and he'll be crying uncle.
The Outraged Liberal has a
The Outraged Liberal has a point. But it is juvenile to say that the mayor of Boston affects only Boston residents. The city is the economic and cultural capital of the state, and arguably of New England.
My problem with the media,
My problem with the media, at all levels, is that they wait until what they say means almost nothing.
They wait until close to an election to endorse but by then many people have made up their minds. They wait until midway through an election to report on the issues when some of the best candidates have already shriveled away due to not being covered. Many local papers complain and whine about low turnout but do not cover the election until AFTER it happens and the winners are crowned.
Reporters of the major newspapers need to focus on issues and candidates early and in a non partisan way.
For starters....
..the local media should do comprehensive fact checking of the claims of every campaign. And they should call people on lies and distortions, whenever these get perpetrated. This should be done with no false balancing -- matching a huge lie against a minor mis-statement and treating them as of equal significance.