Edwards, Iowa and beyond
A letter we received the other day:
If the Winston-Salem Journal is going to print promotional ads for John Edwards disguised as news articles three days in a row, such as those by James Rosemer run on the front page December 16, 17, and 18, wouldn’t it be simpler and more honest to run an official endorsement of Edwards on your editorial page?
Or are we to assume that you will be running three consecutive days of free front-page promotions for all the candidates in coming weeks?
We dispatched one of our best reporters to Iowa last week to follow the Edwards campaign and to report on the Iowa caucuses. We even started a blog, although it will morph into more general election coverage as the months go by.
The question of whether our political coverage is too Edwardscentric isn’t just an external question. We’ve had the same debate in our newsroom. I think there are a couple of things going on that explain our reasoning.
1) Edwards is a North Carolinian, and the first serious candidate from the state in years. Plenty of people don’t like him, but that’s neither here nor there. To the nation, he is us, and we need to take his candidacy seriously. Not as a booster, but as journalists.
2) The Iowa caucus is a political lifetime away from the North Carolina primary in May, and our readers can’t vote in Iowa. So us looking at the presidential race through the prism of a local candidate doesn’t really alter the outcome. It’s a way to organize coverage and prioritize our resources. For better or for worse, our state’s leaders decided that NC would probably not be a player in choosing the major party candidates. If by some chance, there is still uncertainty about the nominee prior to our primary, I can assure you we will give detailed coverage of candidates (both Dem. and Rep.) ahead of time.
As we move into full holiday mode, a couple of final thoughts.
My posts will likely be minimal in the next week or so (my gift to you all ...) and will get back into full OTTERBLOG mode come 2008.
Have a safe and healthy holiday with family, friends and --- yes, even enemies.
I appreciate all the comments, snide remarks, admonitions and sound advice this past year.
Thnx
Your host is Ken Otterbourg, the managing editor at the Winston-Salem Journal. It's a forum to discuss the media, from
Bet that letter writer loved today’s paper.
I am hoping the nation doesn’t do as you said and look at John Edwards and think, “So that is North Carolina.” I would hope Burr and Dole would reflect it a little better as our current senators, though the two of them leave much to be desired. Edwards makes a poor reflection of your average N. Carolinian, in my humble opinion, regardless of party affiliation.
David: Thnx for writing. I would agree that Edwards is not reflective of our entire state, but there probably isn’t any one person who is, including any of our existing statewide elected officials. Gov. Easley and Sen. Burr probably come closest in my mind. But Edwards—political affiliation aside—is reflective of a reasonably sizable fraction of the state, and I think he’s selling that story in Iowa to anybody who will listen, particularly those who, unlike yourself, don’t have that much familiarity with our little piece of paradise. Key story lines: 1) I grew up humble and through education and hard work, I made it; 2) I talk like a southerner and that could count for something in a general election where the South always votes Republican.
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