{"id":57588,"date":"2024-09-25T00:03:21","date_gmt":"2024-09-25T00:03:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=57588"},"modified":"2024-09-25T00:03:21","modified_gmt":"2024-09-25T00:03:21","slug":"editorial-endorsements-do-they-matter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=57588","title":{"rendered":"Editorial endorsements … do they matter?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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One of the aspects of a presidential election that I do not miss is having to go through the editorial endorsement process for the candidates who are lined up in spots along a lengthy ballot.<\/p>\n

I went through that process seemingly every year for nearly four decades. We’d do it every even-numbered year for legislative and congressional races. We would do the same thing every four years when the time arrived for us to decide on whom to endorse for president.<\/p>\n

I worked for editors and publishers who would shy away from the word “endorse.” They preferred to call it a “recommendation.” Yeah, I get it. Newspapers hardly ever are able to swing the tide of an audience that has its mind made up. So, I guess we did only offer our “recommendation” for readers to consider.<\/p>\n

But we would go through the motions of considering which of the candidates were the better choice.<\/p>\n

The 1980 presidential election presented us at our newspaper in Oregon with a dilemma. My staff and I weren’t nuts about President Carter or former California Gov. Ronald Reagan. So, I drafted an editorial recommending independent candidate John Anderson, the congressman from Illinois. I presented it to the publisher who, without even blinking, handed it back to me and said, “We’re going to back Reagan.”<\/p>\n

The rest is history.<\/p>\n

Newspaper editorials no longer have the clout they once enjoyed. Readers depend on newspapers’ guidance less today than ever.\u00a0 They rely on myriad sources.<\/p>\n

Then again, did we really have the impact we sought? Ohhhh … probably not.<\/p>\n\n

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One of the aspects of a presidential election that I do not miss is having to go through the editorial endorsement process for the candidates who are lined up in spots along a lengthy ballot. I went through that process seemingly every year for nearly four decades. We’d do it every even-numbered year for legislative … Continue reading Editorial endorsements … do they matter?<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[179,7419,2858],"class_list":["post-57588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media-news","tag-agn-media","tag-maga","tag-mainstream-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57588"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57588\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57589,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57588\/revisions\/57589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}