In the wake of last week’s midterm election and some ensuing commentary about the state of local media, CJR associate editor Greg Marx and United States Project correspondent Deron Lee shared thoughts on the strengths and weaknesses of local news. A record of the discussion is below.
From: Greg Marx, 11:11pm Nov. 11
Hey Deron,
It feels like we’ve had a fresh round of media worrying over the state of local news in the past week or so. “Is There Hope for Local News?” asked The Atlantic, in a piece that wasn’t all that hopeful. At the Reynolds Institute site, Nikki Usher wrote about the “resounding failure” of local news startups to attract investment. (Just ask DC’s Homicide Watch and Philly’s Gun Crisis Reporting Project.) And, in the piece that I think we’ll talk about most, The New Republic’s Alec MacGillis argued that Joni Ernst, a tea party Republican who’d embraced “borderline-crackpot theories,” was able to skate through the recent Senate campaign because of the decline in local political accountability journalism, of which “Iowa is the ultimate example.” (Those theories include state nullification of federal laws and the idea that the UN seeks to consolidate rural populations into urban centers.)
We do plenty of worrying about the state of local news here too, of course, and I think usually for good reason. I also tend to think the gloom narrative, while not necessarily wrong, obscures the fact that there is still a lot of creative, enterprising accountability journalism happening around the country. There’s even some analytical political reporting that rivals anything out of Washington in its authority. The concerns are very real, and the situation varies from place to place, but it’s not a wasteland out there.
But–for whatever reason, I think it is true that the enterprise and creativity we still see from local media outlets often goes missing from coverage of statewide and congressional campaigns. At least, it was often missing from these midterms. Corey Hutchins wrote about this for us a couple times from Colorado, where a really competitive election season turned into a “coverage Quaalude.” While I didn’t agree with everything in the MacGillis piece, from what I’ve seen, coverage in Iowa was pretty flat, too (with a few exceptions, as you’ve written).
But as our correspondent out on the Great Plains, you were following the coverage out there more closely than I was. So I’m curious: What did you think of the coverage in Iowa (or elsewhere)? Do you think the situation I’m describing, of campaign coverage that underperforms the best of what local outlets do, is accurate? And if so, any thoughts on why that might be?
From: Deron Lee, 9:29am Nov. 12
Thanks, Greg. A lot to think about here. I’ll start with Iowa and we can work from there.
I don’t think you can accuse the Iowa Senate campaign coverage of being boring, exactly. In fact, the season produced one odd, occasionally amusing, mini-controversy after another. You had some interesting through-lines that emerged, which reporters picked up on—Joni Ernst as the scrappy, folksy underdog who managed to somehow unite the establishment and tea-party wings of the GOP at once, and Bruce Braley, the experienced, well-funded pol who was tripped up by gaffes (really, one huge gaffe) and silly pseudo-scandals. The problem, as many observers said, was that these narrative frames and sideshows distracted from substance.
We saw a wave of pieces at the end of the campaign complaining that the media ignored some of Ernst’s fringe right-wing views while focusing instead on her winning personality and Braley’s apparent lack thereof. This included not only the MacGillis piece you mentioned in The New Republic, but Slate, The Atlantic, Mother Jones, Salon and others.
A couple of things must be said about these complaints. They came largely from left-leaning or Democratic-leaning commentators who saw that Ernst was going to win and just couldn’t believe it. That doesn’t mean they lacked merit, however. The media’s generally superficial take on Ernst was something I wrote about as early as June; after that, I think the coverage generally improved, but those narrative frames were cast in stone before the general-election campaign had even begun, and they weren’t going away.
Also, it’s important to note that most of these complaints were directed at national media as much as local media—and rightfully so, I think. So to the extent that the coverage of this race fell short, it may say as much about the state of national reporting as it does about local reporting.
The exception to this was MacGillis, who did take the national media to task for its framing of the campaign, but as you noted, also argued that Ernst “capitalized” on the recent “decline of the traditional media, and of local newspapers in particular.”
I have mixed feelings about this critique, but it’s certainly one worth exploring. Greg, I know you’ve read and thought a lot about the MacGillis piece in particular. Can you give us your thoughts about his argument as it pertains in Iowa and elsewhere?
From: Greg Marx, 1:07pm Nov. 12
I think you’re right about the power of narrative in shaping political coverage. As Brendan Nyhan has written for CJR, that can be especially true when it comes to a politician’s character or personality. Both Braley and Ernst had personas attached to them early in the campaign, and future events get interpreted in light of those views. But that’s not a critique that applies only, or even primarily, to local outlets.
I also tend to think there’s no real consensus among mainstream reporters about when fringy statements by candidates are newsworthy. Obviously, when out-there statements touch on an issue that’s already salient, or fit into a broader narrative, the media can jump all over it—ask Todd Akin. But when a candidate doesn’t self-present as ideologically extreme and isn’t likely to have a lot of personal power, and the issue is obscure or seen as settled, not so much. Again, not sure there’s a distinction between local and national outlets on this.
Finally, as other media critics have argued, reporters have a soft spot for the performance of political authenticity. And Ernst is widely seen to have delivered a successful performance. Even a piece of national-media vetting MacGillis highlights, a Daily Beast article about her political maneuvering in a local veterans’ commission, aims to undercut her “Iowa nice” persona, not highlight what she said about Agenda 21 or WMD in Iraq.
So I’m inclined to think that to the extent that Ernst got a free pass, that reflects how campaign reporting is done as much as a diminution of local media. (I also tend to think that more coverage of some of Ernst’s comments would have had less electoral impact than many of the liberal critics seem to think, though that’s obviously speculative, and doesn’t mean some of her comments didn’t deserve more attention.)
I worry more about the lack of local enterprise campaign coverage more broadly—from what I read in a few cases around the country, even fairly basic stuff like how a shift in control of the Senate was likely to affect (or not affect) issues that might matter a lot to a particular state or region was scarce. Or scarcer than it should have been.
Then there are storylines that might be more for a political-junkie audience, but I’d still love to see. You wrote after the primary about how spending from outside groups might represent different wings of the GOP coalescing behind Ernst. As politics becomes ever more nationalized, the coordination of party networks becomes more complex and important, and it affects the choices voters face in state-level races. Did you see that tackled in coverage there? (Of course the role of parties also came up, in a different way, in Kansas, where you’re based.)
I’ve got a few thoughts about why local campaign coverage might be less strong than other government coverage—but I’ll save them for my next note.
From: Deron Lee, 8:04pm Nov. 12
I do think more attention could have been paid among Iowa’s press corps to some of Ernst’s more inflammatory statements, past and present, that MacGillis and others identified—although I doubt it would have affected the vote much, and I don’t think Ernst exactly got a “pass” either. But I have no problem with Braley’s seeming insult to farmers receiving the attention that it did. It wasn’t just a “silly season” campaign story—Braley was caught making a serious, substantive and revealing comment, however misguided. And, needless to say, it’s a farm state.
(The chicken-dispute story, on the other hand, was classic “silly season” fluff. That one seems to have gotten more play nationally than in-state.)
It’s not clear to me either that the coverage of Ernst’s statements, as MacGillis describes it, exposed any particular decline in the local media. But I think you have a point when it comes to enterprise reporting. The Des Moines Register did some deeper dives—there was the multipart ad-spending report that I wrote about in September, and an analysis of Ernst’s and Braley’s respective legislative records. But this kind of work is, sadly, increasingly rare from local newspapers.
When it comes to the question of Senate control, as you noted, there actually was a lot of media discussion about that issue in the Kansas Senate campaign—because the candidates made it an issue. Greg Orman promised to use it for leverage if he won and the Senate battle came down to a tie; Pat Roberts stopped discussing his own record altogether and tried to make the race all about President Obama and Harry Reid. I didn’t see much discussion of that issue in Iowa coverage, even though Ernst’s victory last Tuesday helped clinch a GOP takeover—and it may be that many Iowans did vote for Ernst primarily to oust Reid and put a check on Obama.
As for the related issue of nationalized campaigns, that has been a recurring theme in my study of political coverage in this region. The troubling thing is that these campaigns and their surrogate groups just become bigger, more media-savvy, better funded and better staffed each cycle, while local news organizations tend to just get smaller. The sums of money being spent, the number of ads being run, the amount of information and misinformation being peddled by the campaigns and their allied groups is overwhelming, and for these local papers, at best you have a handful of reporters who have to process, evaluate and report it all—or not.
There’s a kind of vertical integration between national parties, outside groups and local campaigns going on at unprecedented levels; there’s big spending; there’s great potential for improprieties involving coordination between candidates and surrogate groups. There’s a lot of work out there for aspiring investigative journalists—if they have the time and resources to do the job, which they increasingly don’t.
This is true not only in political campaigns but in state governance, as national groups like ALEC and Americans United for Life have exercised tremendous influence on legislatures in my region and across the country—and local outlets have often been slow to pick up on that. (The troubling disappearance of statehouse reporters isn’t helping.)
We need political coverage, national and local, that is as savvy as the campaigns themselves. And it’s not completely unattainable, I think. The good news about this (not-so) new media landscape is that reporters everywhere have resources that they didn’t have in the past—new tools for research, new platforms to publish, share and curate information. It’s just a question of whether we have enough boots on the ground, and the will and the knowledge, to put all these tools into action for the benefit of readers.
From: Greg Marx, 11:16am Nov. 14
That’s a good point about how the national policy networks that aim to influence state policy don’t draw much coverage from local outlets, either. Whether it’s taxes or abortion or redistricting, the greatest scrutiny of these groups’ role has tended to come from either liberal-leaning publications (since conservative groups have been much more aggressive and effective in this arena) or national investigative outlets like ProPublica. Democrats say they’re finally going to join this fight in earnest; maybe more political competition will put the broader phenomenon more prominently on the media agenda.
I want to circle back to the idea that local campaign/partisan politics coverage tends to be less compelling than other local accountability coverage of government. If that’s true (and I think it is) a big part of it is probably just that, as you said, these nationalized political operations are increasingly disciplined and effective at controlling the narrative. Plus, in an electoral campaign or short legislative session, there’s always another time-sensitive demand and something else to attract a reporter’s attention. I don’t want to make exposing shady sheriffs or systemic prison-sentencing errors sound easy–it’s not!–but politics reporters face some particular obstacles.
And, while this is speculative, I think the current state of the media/jobs market plays a role. Obviously, medium-sized metro papers have been hit as hard as anybody. But the market for national political reporting, usually done from the Acela corridor, is probably stronger than ever (Bloomberg, Politico, BuzzFeed, Vox, a newly flush New Republic, The Guardian, Fusion, etc, etc). Then you have clusters in Texas or Los Angeles where political reporting is prioritized are resources are committed. It would be weird if that market situation weren’t pulling some talented political reporters (and aspiring reporters) away from local markets, no matter how much local outlets want to prioritize the beat as they are forced to cut and restructure. The loss of in-state reporters came up at a recent post-campaign discussion in Colorado, and you can also look at South Carolina, where the young reporter whose work helped take down the state Speaker of the House is now at Bloomberg (where she’s covering business, not politics). Of course, it’s always been the case that journalists moved from smaller to larger outlets–but the factors that once tipped American media toward a regional/local focus have disappeared, and that shows up especially in politics.
In the immortal words of CNN, I’ll leave it there. Any final thoughts?
From: Deron Lee, 12:41pm Nov. 14
With respect to the job market–which also comes up in the MacGillis piece–we should note that in Iowa, the Register claims to be adding political reporters as part of the latest restructuring. That doesn’t necessarily make up for what the paper is losing, but it could be a silver lining for those of us who value local political journalism.
But while some other Gannett papers have made similar pledges, I’m doubtful we’ll see local organizations doing that more broadly. With its first-in-the-nation caucuses, Iowa is obviously a bit of an outlier in terms of the importance it places on politics. Elsewhere in my coverage area—Kansas, Nebraska, and Missouri—politics has not necessarily been a full-time media preoccupation.
But I would like to see smaller regional outlets in particular shake themselves out of that notion. We’ve done a couple of different stories, for instance, noting that Rep. Tim Huelskamp’s policy statements and his work in Washington seem to draw more attention in national outlets than in the small papers that dot the landscape in his vast, western Kansas district. Those papers are thinly staffed, have a hyperlocal focus, and tend to pay attention to Huelskamp only when he comes to visit. But while they may not have the resources to do the kind of political enterprise reporting you’re looking for, Greg, I believe they can take more time to at least round up what their representatives are doing in Washington, perhaps in blog form—a process that can be started with a simple Google News search. Particularly when you have representatives as colorful as Huelskamp—or say, Rep. Steve King in Iowa, or Sen. Claire McCaskill in Missouri, or even Sen.-elect Joni Ernst—some readers will be very interested to hear what they’re up to. That kind of coverage won’t always be terribly substantive or edifying, and that’s OK; politics can’t be just about eating your vegetables.
Politics has become a growth industry—certainly for lobbyists and consultants and oppo researchers and other outside operators, and also, as you mention, for reporters at the national level. And as we’ve discussed, the national political landscape is more intertwined with local governance than ever before. So the good news is that there are more stories to tell. I don’t want to see local reporters shying away from those stories, and I don’t think local readers do either. But right now if readers want big-picture political coverage, they most likely have to look elsewhere—and as you point out, ambitious political reporters can look elsewhere too.
I don’t like to see smaller outlets ceding this ground to the Bloombergs and Politicos, or worse, to the Breitbarts and FireDogLakes—or even worse than that, to the increasingly sophisticated media apparatus of the parties and PACs. Greater engagement with politics won’t solve the grave financial challenges faced by local legacy media organizations, but it could be a step toward renewed relevance.
Deron Lee and Greg Marx are CJR contributors. Lee is a Midwest correspondent for the United States Project, and Marx is an associate editor working on the project.