Big headlines popped up in media circles last week when the billionaire owners of The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times blocked editorials that would have endorsed Kamala Harris. News staff turmoil followed with resignations at the Times and op-eds and a petition from opinion writers at the Post.
USA Today, which endorsed a presidential candidate for the first time in its 38 years in 2020, has reverted to neutrality. The Wall Street Journal hasn’t backed a presidential candidate since Herbert Hoover. If it were to shift course in the next few days, that would be a true October surprise.
That leaves The New York Times by its lonesome among national newspapers in still endorsing (Harris, of course, several times over).
I had already been looking at regional papers, where the steady move away from taking sides in presidential elections has become an epidemic. The largest chains — Gannett and Alden Global’s MediaNews Group and Tribune Publishing — have all stopped. (Hearst and Advance Local still leave their papers the option.)
Independent, locally owned organizations dominate the shrinking list of holdouts. Here, too, disengagement is becoming a trend. The highly regarded (and recently renamed) Minnesota Star Tribune alerted readers on Sept. 23 that no endorsement would be forthcoming.
The Star Tribune published an explanation that reads, to me, as many such do: murky and excuse-filled. The note to readers from opinion editor Phil Morris said in part: “We will vet the positions and offer policy analysis of the candidates seeking the nation’s two highest offices. We will take note of but forgo … judgment as to what might qualify as disqualifying campaign behavior. We are confident in the ability of informed citizens to decide whom they wish to vote for based on what they see, hear and research.”
(Poynter’s Tampa Bay Times has also dropped its tradition of recommending a presidential candidate.)
Bailing on presidential endorsement is part of a broader move among regional publications away from airing staff-written opinions. There are a number of reasons why:
- Staff and space are pinched. Something’s got to go. At Gannett, extensive studies found that editorials, at least in digital format, were among the least-read content.
- Gannett also concluded that “readers don’t want us to tell them what to think.” Convening opinion discussions on local matters with staff and guest contributors remains an acceptable alternative.
- A regional paper doesn’t speak with authority on national matters. Studies have shown that a news outlet endorsement has little impact on how people vote.
- No matter how many times the clarification is offered that an editorial board and the newsroom operate separately, many readers don’t see the distinction or don’t believe there is one. That’s especially true in digital format, where the editorial pages are harder to wall off than print editions.
I asked four editors at papers still endorsing why and to comment, if they wished, on publications that have quit. Here are some of their replies by email:
Richard Jones, managing editor opinion, The Philadelphia Inquirer:
Our board believes deeply that endorsements are a vital part of the public service mission of newspapers, and that — particularly in races that are as close as this year’s election appears to be in Pennsylvania — they can be an important sense-making tool for voters.
Regarding other outlets who’ve backed away from endorsements, every news organization has to do what it thinks is best, but it would be a slippery slope if boards started making those decisions because of financial motivations or concerns about other kinds of backlash.
Kate Riley, editorial page editor, The Seattle Times:
We continue to do endorsements and our readers really value them. … For president, we evaluate the candidates’ policies and how they will affect unique issues of Washington state. As a trade-dependent state, we care about what the next president thinks about trade, Pacific Rim geopolitics and even the Arctic.
As for papers that don’t do them anymore, I’m disappointed because there is less perspective on how a community is thinking. But I cannot criticize, given what’s happened to our industry. To do it right, the endeavor is hard, exhausting and time-consuming.
Josh Brodesky, editorial page editor, San Antonio Express-News:
For us, a presidential recommendation is an opportunity to make a statement about certain civic values and expectations for governance. We have a voice and platform, and so we use them. Hopefully, our recommendations prompt reflection and guidance.
Therese Bottomly, editor, The Oregonian and Oregon Live:
We are constantly assessing the best use of our local resources. It’s a legitimate question whether a national endorsement makes sense for a local newspaper, and no doubt we’ll engage with that question again in the future. For this cycle, our thinking was similar to 2020, when we said:
Our decision to endorse in this race reverses our policy in 2012 and 2016. We heard the community’s disappointment over our past non-endorsements loud and clear. Particularly at this precipitous moment, we recognize both the privilege and obligation we have to advocate for the candidate who can best lead our country forward.
All four endorsed Harris. Donald Trump endorsements have been rarer than rare. According to Wikipedia’s running compilation, there are only a half dozen in the Trump camp, led by the Las Vegas Review-Journal, whose owners are the Adelson family, prolific Republican donors.
Internal and external critics have hypothesized that Jeff Bezos of the Post and Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong of the Los Angeles Times are protecting their non-news business interests by pulling endorsements, or hedging in cowardly fashion against retribution against their publications from Trump if he wins. The owners wouldn’t say so even if that were true. The case against them, however, also isn’t provable.
I’m not a noncombatant on the flight of the regionals from presidential endorsements. The fashionable argument has become that voters should merely be informed by news and editorial pages and then decide for themselves. Fallacious? If they read the paper’s recommendation, as the executives I talked with suggested, voters will still decide for themselves.
I get that these are polarized times (though maybe not uniquely so). But the idea is to avoid offending the half or so of the audience who will be voting for Trump. Being afraid of your own readers strikes me as wishy-washy. And wishy-washy is a bad place for news outlets to be.
This article was originally published on Poynter and republished on IJNet with permission.
Photo by Jennifer Burk on Unsplash.