tag:www.cjr.org,2011-09-12://4 2012-05-18T18:26:15Z Columbia Journalism Review: Strong Press, Strong Democracy Movable Type Pro 4.34-en tag:www.cjr.org,2012://4.30454 2012-05-18T15:03:33Z 2012-05-18T18:26:15Z

A little poli-sci—or just recent history—would have helped pundits avoid the hype

Brendan Nyhan On Thursday, the board of Americans Elect folded its presidential nominating process after the set of declared candidates repeatedly failed to muster the support required to receive the group's backing. Despite spending $35 million on "swank offices", a fancy website, and expensive ballot access drives, Americans Elect ultimately attracted neither a credible candidate nor widespread support. If you read the tag:www.cjr.org,2012://4.30452 2012-05-18T11:31:43Z 2012-05-18T11:30:45Z

Some local outlets take the bait, while others offer a closer look

Jay Jones NEVADA — One of the moments in the 2012 presidential race that we all know was coming arrived this week: the Obama campaign launched its first round of attacks on Mitt Romney over his tenure at Bain Capital. Unsurprisingly, there was a swing-state emphasis to the offensive. In addition to new TV commercials and a website targeting “Romney economics,” the tag:www.cjr.org,2012://4.30447 2012-05-17T19:14:00Z 2012-05-17T19:13:47Z

To gauge what’s really happening in the TV ad war, reporters need to talk to voters

Walter Shapiro The Living Room War was launched this week—the ferocious bombardment of attack ads that will make turning on a television in an up-for-grabs state like Ohio a high-risk, wear-a-metal-helmet venture for the next 25 weeks until Election Day. But to cover the biggest TV advertising blitz in American political history smartly and to understand its strategic implications, reporters and pundits tag:www.cjr.org,2012://4.30443 2012-05-16T19:30:34Z 2012-05-17T01:29:41Z

Faced with an opportunity to lead civic discussion and take a stand, some papers fare better than others

Andria Krewson NORTH CAROLINA — Last week, North Carolina voters overwhelmingly passed Amendment One to the state constitution, defining marriage as between one man and one woman only. The May 8 vote—coming a day before President Obama’s declaration of support for gay marriage—produced renewed national debate about gay marriage as well as jokes portraying this state as backwards. Amendment One supporters said tag:www.cjr.org,2012://4.30437 2012-05-15T19:19:50Z 2012-05-15T19:27:48Z

What about Vermont? (Not to mention Maryland)

Trudy Lieberman We all know Obamacare is Romneycare and Romneycare is Obamacare and that the Bay State has set the standard for everything health reform—from the individual mandate right down to ways to cut its gigantic medical bill. Or at least the media have passed along that narrative. The Wall Street Journal’s recent piece, “Same State, New Stab at Health Care,”was no tag:www.cjr.org,2012://4.30432 2012-05-15T10:50:00Z 2012-05-15T18:49:45Z

Political ads may not be all "gravy" for local stations—but they're still an awfully good deal

Erika Fry http://www.cjr.org When Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum suspended his presidential campaign last month, the former Pennsylvania senator all but sealed Mitt Romney’s easy victory in the state’s April 24 primary. Santorum also dashed the expectations of his home state’s broadcasters, who were counting on the candidate to keep the race competitive and their ad inventory—much of which had already been reserved tag:www.cjr.org,2012://4.30431 2012-05-14T19:00:19Z 2012-05-18T18:40:10Z

A review of Samuel L. Popkin’s The Candidate

Jordan Michael Smith The Candidate: What It Takes to Win—And Hold—The White House | By Samuel L. Popkin | Oxford University Press | 350 pages, $27.95 Academic political science and Washington policymaking once had a close relationship: during the Franklin Roosevelt and Kennedy administrations, for example. No longer. As Karl Rove writes as a blurb on this book, most contemporary political science tag:www.cjr.org,2012://4.30430 2012-05-14T15:29:39Z 2012-05-14T15:25:47Z

Michigan political reporters have a job to do

Anna Clark MICHIGAN — Quinn Klinefelter is a longtime news editor at WDET, the National Public Radio station in Detroit. His voice is easily recognizable, and so, apparently, is his face. Klinefelter recalls walking down a block, absorbed in his thoughts, when he passed a man he’d never met. They were several yards past each other when the man turned back and tag:www.cjr.org,2012://4.30422 2012-05-11T19:42:02Z 2012-05-11T19:42:29Z

Some sharp interview questions leave a congressional hopeful squirming

Jay Jones NEVADA — In this state, where it’s legal to carry an unconcealed handgun, John Oceguera, the Speaker of the Nevada Assembly, didn’t even need to unholster his pistol to shoot himself in the foot. He’d probably prefer to imagine taking aim at the messengers—the political journalists who roasted him on two television programs, and in print, this week. Oceguera, a tag:www.cjr.org,2012://4.30418 2012-05-10T16:07:16Z 2012-05-10T18:14:49Z

A glut of "swing-state" stories risks inspiring false certainty about the coming election

Walter Shapiro For a newspaper that believes that a decent fraction of its readers know that Kurt Weill wrote the music for The Threepenny Opera (51 Down in Wednesday’s Crossword), The New York Times curiously assumes complete amnesia when it comes to presidential campaigns. The hanging-chad long count in Florida that decided the 2000 election—down the memory hole. The 60,000-vote shift in tag:www.cjr.org,2012://4.30417 2012-05-10T15:42:25Z 2012-05-10T15:52:46Z

"We’re pitching things and hope people run it. We’re not paying for ads”

Trudy Lieberman The small-business community has revved up its campaign to repeal a tax on insurance companies intended to help finance subsidies for the uninsured, a part of President Obama’s healthcare reform that would take effect in 2014. Congress expected the tax to raise some $87 billion over the 10 years the subsidies were funded. It is aimed at insurance carriers, but tag:www.cjr.org,2012://4.30413 2012-05-10T04:20:00Z 2012-05-09T21:02:45Z

Dayton Daily News shows how local lawmakers shuffle campaign donations to cash-strapped colleagues

T.C. Brown OHIO—A thorough peek behind a curtain of campaign cash this week by the Dayton Daily News shed real light on one way that political money moves. The newspaper, in a story crafted by Jeremy P. Kelley, walked readers through the legal, but perhaps not widely-known, practices by which money donated to a candidate on cruise control is diverted to another tag:www.cjr.org,2012://4.30409 2012-05-09T15:15:51Z 2012-05-10T02:12:44Z

Finding out who paid $10,000 to party with Congress members remains a reporting challenge

Mary Winter COLORADO—A CBS News undercover video of a Republican fundraiser earlier this year gave viewers a tantalizing glimpse of a $10,000-a-head political shindig at one of the most exclusive resorts in the country. The sometimes-grainy footage showed a dozen GOP congressmen in shorts and sandals enjoying a sun-splashed weekend at the Ocean Reef Club in Key Largo, Florida. “But they didn't tag:www.cjr.org,2012://4.30402 2012-05-08T16:00:00Z 2012-05-08T17:12:27Z

As the candidates’ positions change, reporters construct differing narratives

Brendan Nyhan NEW HAMPSHIRE—Are Barack Obama and Mitt Romney so different after all? Despite the media’s portrayal of Romney as a uniquely craven politician, the recent controversy over Obama’s views on gay marriage highlights the ways that both candidates—like nearly all politicians—have adjusted their positions over their careers for political reasons. On Sunday’s Meet the Press, Vice President Joe Biden made unexpected tag:www.cjr.org,2012://4.30398 2012-05-08T15:30:00Z 2012-05-09T15:11:23Z

In North Carolina, TV news reporters find stories in their stations’ political ad buy data

Andria Krewson NORTH CAROLINA—On April 27, the Federal Communications Commission made what CJR called “a good step toward transparency in the realm of money and politics” by ruling that local TV stations must move online their paper data on political ad buys. Network-affiliated stations in the top 50 markets will have to do this likely in the next few months; other stations