Clark Hoyt on election coverage in the New York Times:

Through Friday, of 270 news articles published in The Times about the election since the national tickets were formed in late August, only 29, or a little over 10 percent, were primarily about policy substance. And that is a generous tally that includes some very brief items.

A similar pattern holds for news media in general, reports Hoyt. “Not a standard to aspire to.”

Also:

Times editors know that their issues coverage has lagged but say much more is in the pipeline and that issues have been addressed throughout even the horse-race reporting.

Hopefully that pipelines starts producing soon (given that Election Day is, what, a couple of weeks off?) Meantime, Times readers can, apparently, look for crumbs of “issues coverage” within the horseracey stuff.