This time of year is the silly season for candidates and their tripping all over each other to parade out their endorsements from newspapers. So I thought I would take a few minutes to share my ten cents about "newspaper endorsements" — which is this.
First and foremost — what IS the endorsement of a newspaper? In almost every case, it means that the editorial board of a newspaper has held some sort of vote and decided to put the good name of that paper behind a particular candidate for office. Who is on an editorial board? Well, to be honest, that varies from paper to paper. But it has been my experience that these are the editorial writers for the paper, and then add for good measure the editorial page director, sometimes it includes columnists, and even the local cartoonist. Decidedly NOT voting on the final decision to endorse a particular candidate are the political reporters from the ‘news’ side of a newspaper, though often the news reporters are invited to come and ‘explain’ the details of a race that they are covering, and answer questions from the editorial board.
Of course, the important thing to remember is that most of the editorial boards of newspapers around California are populating by liberal ideologues, who have a decidedly favorable view of the use of government as a remedy for all of California’s ills. Admittedly, that is a generalization. There are some examples of newspapers with editorial boards that tend to be more conservative, but that is by far the exception rather than the rule.
As a conservative, when I see that a newspaper has endorsed a candidate, I really start to wonder exactly what liberal thing that candidate has done in order to garner the endorsement. For example, when I see that Arnold Schwarzenegger has been endorsed by so many newspapers, I attribute that to these liberal editorial board members being enamored and excited by the Governor’s new ‘bi-partisan’ push excites them. This, of course, is combined with the fact that Angelides’ anemic campaign has pretty much convinced these ed board members that Angelides couldn’t possibly win.
How many newspaper editorial boards line up behind conservatives like Tom McClintock, Tony Strickland or Chuck Poochigian? You can count their newspaper editorial board endorsements on one hand!
So while it is probably noteworthy when a Democrat is so embarrassing, like Phil Angelides or Cruz Bustamante, that liberal editorial board members actually support a moderate Republican — let’s not get too carried away.
The biggest utility of newspaper endorsements is that they generally serve as a reminder to those of us in the blogosphere as to why newspapers are slowly but surely losing market share as consumers of news look to other places and ways to get their news. From newspapers, we’re looking for objectivity in reporting. And speaking for myself, I would be just as happy if the flower-children that occupy most editorial page boards would keep their opinions about who should be elected to office — to themselves!