For months now, Campaign Desk has been encouraging political reporters to commit two kinds of heresy: first, to put an end to their slavish reliance on anonymous sources, and second, to take one giant step beyond the revered he-said/she-said/I’m-outta-here school of campaign reporting that so often leaves readers befuddled, as opposed to informed.
We’ve cited and deconstructed specimens of these flawed species dozens of times, yet for the most part it’s been like firing away at the kewpie dolls at the county fair — no matter how many you take out, another pops up.
Today, however, we entered a parallel universe. We picked up The New York Times and, lo, there on page one was a story on Democrats urging vice presidential candidate John Edwards to assume a more confrontational and high profile-stance on the campaign trail. Randal C. Archibold and Adam Nagourney write about how concerned Democrats worry that the soft-spoken Edwards has been invisible next to attack dog Dick Cheney, his Republican counterpart. And then — drumrollll — they reel off not just comments, but the names of the chatterboxes: Donna Brazile (who managed Al Gore’s campaign in 2000), Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, Tony Coelho, a Democratic strategist who also had a hand in the Gore campaign, and Paul C. Light, an NYU professor and expert on the vice presidency.
In a saner world, there would be nothing noteworthy about a campaign story that actually names the names of the folks commenting and elaborating upon a reporter’s thesis. But in the Year of our Lord 2004, it’s little short of revolutionary.
Drunk with gratitude, we next turned to Elisabeth Bumiller’s story about Kerry’s campaign stop in Detroit. And there was another phenomenon we’ve seen all too little of this year — a reporter (Bumiller) rattling off the claims of each side, then stepping back to systematically compare those claims to the known facts. Bumiller does it four separate times, including one detailed three-paragraph breakdown of John Kerry’s voting record on proposed tax increases that demonstrates, show-&-tell style, to the reader how Kerry’s record varies from the standard portrayal of it offered up by the Bush campaign.
Again, that’s the kind of thing that ought to be second nature to a seasoned campaign reporter armed with Internet information available at the click of a mouse. But in fact, looking for examples of that simple kind of enterprise in this campaign year has been like panning for nuggets of gold in a sewer.
So here’s to Archibold, Nagourney, and Bumiller — and to whomever it was at The Times who lit a fire under them.
–Steve Lovelady
Steve Lovelady was editor of CJR Daily.