{"id":870,"date":"2012-10-20T21:06:00","date_gmt":"2012-10-20T21:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/2012\/10\/20\/do-newspaper-endorsements-matter-these-days"},"modified":"2012-10-20T21:06:00","modified_gmt":"2012-10-20T21:06:00","slug":"do-newspaper-endorsements-matter-these-days","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=870","title":{"rendered":"Do newspaper endorsements matter these days?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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I\u2019m curious about something. Does it really matter these days what a newspaper editorial page says about a political contest?<\/p>\n

Endorsements for president are coming out now. One of them has surprised me. It comes from the Salt Lake Tribune, in the heart of Mormonland, aka Utah. The Tribune endorsed President Obama over Mitt Romney, the man who saved the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics and a lifelong member of the Mormon Church. The Tribune\u2019s reason? There have been too many Romneys, owing to the remarkable change of heart he\u2019s had on some key issues. My bet is that the Deseret News, Salt Lake\u2019s other paper \u2013 the one owned by the church \u2013 will back Romney.<\/p>\n

Take a look at the Tribune\u2019s editorial here. Be advised: It\u2019s a long one.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.sltrib.com\/sltrib\/opinion\/55019844-82\/endorsement-romney-obama-president.html.csp<\/a><\/p>\n

The Dallas Morning News the other day endorsed Romney for president. The News\u2019 rationale is simple: Obama\u2019s had his chance and he hasn\u2019t done the job of turning the economy around.<\/p>\n

I toiled on editorial pages exclusively for nearly three decades. I long ago lost count of the number of editorial endorsements I\u2019ve written. But of late I\u2019ve wondered about whether they matter.<\/p>\n

Newspaper editors say they don\u2019t intend to get people to vote the way they recommend. I\u2019ve said it, too. But I\u2019ve been thinking about that. If so, then why even bother? If it doesn\u2019t matter what newspaper editorial boards say about political races, then why waste the space and expend the effort it takes to tell people what you think?<\/p>\n

In this age of instant info and opinion \u2013 and age of cable news channels\u2019 mixing of news and opinion and, indeed, presenting opinion as news while hoping no one can tell the difference \u2013 newspaper endorsements have become something of a relic.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m going to ask for some feedback on that one. I\u2019d be quite interested in learning what others think of endorsements and whether anyone\u2019s opinion on a political race ever has been swayed by what they\u2019ve read on a newspaper editorial page.<\/p>\n

An answer to that final question \u2013 about being swayed \u2013 will require a huge dose of honesty. Any takers?<\/p>\n\n

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I\u2019m curious about something. Does it really matter these days what a newspaper editorial page says about a political contest? Endorsements for president are coming out now. One of them has surprised me. It comes from the Salt Lake Tribune, in the heart of Mormonland, aka Utah. The Tribune endorsed President Obama over Mitt Romney, … Continue reading Do newspaper endorsements matter these days?<\/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":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/870","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=870"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/870\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}