Do Newspaper Endorsements Matter?

As a veteran news reporter who is familiar with the way newspapers operate, I have always believed that editorials and the op-ed pages are the news business equivalent of the cherry on top of an ice cream sundae.

The sundae’s essence is all the ice cream, bananas, nuts, whipped cream and syrup underneath. The cherry is a little perk that goes on top and makes the whole package look pretty. Likewise, editorial pages are the one place where a newspaper (actually, the corporate types who own the paper) can put objectivity aside and use its power to influence the way people think.

An editorial page is one of newspaper publishing’s perks, and that is not necessarily a bad thing. For better or worse, a worthwhile newspaper is a part of its community. A feisty editorial page is a means by which a publisher can urge people to act for the good of the community.

Newspapers with regional pretensions can go so far as to pontificate on the great issues of the day. Hence, the big papers are trying to tell us who to vote for come Feb. 5 in Illinois and on other dates across the country.

When the New York Times last week made a big production out of publicizing that it endorsed Hillary R. Clinton in the Democratic primary for president, editors there admitted they were hoping the announcement would have a national impact and sway the South Carolina Democratic primary to Clinton.

A victory in that state would have kept alive a winning streak for Clinton and likely would have reduced our own home son, Barack Obama, to the rank of a guy who gave his campaign a good try but failed. To some people, the comics truly are a more worthwhile part of the newspaper than the endorsement editorials. Photograph provided by Library of Congress collection.

Closer to home, two of the three major metropolitan newspapers with significant circulation in Illinois – the Chicago Tribune and St. Louis Post-Dispatch – both think voters should choose Obama over all others on the Democratic side.

Neither of the Midwestern newspapers actually circulates in South Carolina (the Times has limited circulation with its national edition), but Obama’s camp was quick to publicize the endorsements as evidence that his candidacy has a growing momentum across the country. The Clinton camp did the same with the Times endorsement.

So does Saturday’s big win for Obama mean that voters don’t care what the New York Times thinks, but that the Chicago Tribune somehow has an innate understanding of the public mindset?

Hardly.

This race is going to be a close one, and I do not believe the 23 elections being held next week Tuesday will decide it. This election cycle has the potential to be the first in my lifetime where the people of the United States really do not find out until the end of the nominating conventions in August just who will be the presidential candidate.

No endorsement from any one newspaper is going to sway that.

For those who complain that newspapers should not be taking a public stance on electoral campaigns (or more likely are upset that your favored candidate was NOT endorsed by your local paper), keep in mind that it is often the political campaigns that WANT the process of endorsements.

Candidates visiting the local newspapers across Illinois in state elections and across the United States in national elections is a campaign ritual, ranking up there with shaking hands, kissing babies and the notion of multiple debates that give candidates a chance to spew rehearsed answers to carefully-timed questions that rarely provide significant truth – but can result in a careless candidate putting a foot in his mouth.

If newspapers were to actually give up the concept of elections endorsement editorials (which some media watchers think they should), it would probably be the candidates who would object the loudest – aside from the editorial writer whose nice job (it’s fairly intellectual, clean and sedate newspaper work, compared to covering crime and natural disasters) would go out the window.

I remember once telling a campaign operative in an Illinois election that I did not fully understand why the campaigns themselves cared so much what the endorsement editorial said, since I am aware that many people are so intimidated by editorial pages that they skip over them to check out the horoscopes.

That operative who has worked on several statewide campaigns responded by telling me how she liked to collect endorsements from around Illinois, then use them as the substance of campaign advertising. Candidates enjoy it when they can run an ad that lists what seems like an endless roster of newspaper names.

To me, those lists are predictable. In Illinois, there are dozens of daily newspapers based in the rural downstate portion that are reliably supportive of Republican candidates. Any GOP candidate who can’t put together a longer list of newspaper endorsements than a Democrat isn’t trying.

By contrast, the Chicago-area newspapers will look favorably to Democrats, with the exception of the Tribune, which differs from other newspapers in our state in that it will attempt to make endorsements in elections across Illinois – right down to the most obscure legislative races in Southern Illinois where the locals prefer to think of themselves as being from near Kentucky, rather than near Chicago.

But the candidates themselves like to think endorsement lists make it appear their campaigns have strong support in all corners of Illinois. I would imagine national campaigns like to collect cities as well.

In this year’s Democratic presidential primary, Obama has places like Chicago, St. Louis and the San Francisco Chronicle, but Clinton has the Times in New York. But the Obama camp could counter by noting Clinton does not dominate the East Coast papers, because he has the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Boston Globe (which is owned by the New York Times Co.)

Clinton can counter Obama’s Midwest support by citing her Kansas City Star endorsement, and she may be able to eat off Obama’s hometown plate when the Chicago Sun-Times (the third major metro that circulates in Illinois) gives its endorsement in the presidential primary.

Based on past campaigns, I guess they will publish their endorsement in this coming Sunday’s editions – just two days prior to the Illinois primary. I don’t have any insider knowledge as to who the newspaper’s editorial board (which lost about half its staff in the recent rounds of job layoffs at the paper) will endorse, but I will not be surprised if they back Clinton just to be different from the Tribune.

The Sun-Times wants to believe it is becoming more of a progressive voice on social issues (for a real progressive voice, one should read the editorial page of the Capital Times in Madison, Wis.), and backing the first serious campaign of a woman for president would fit in with that worldview.

Then again, maybe the newspaper’s historic focus on Chicago proper instead of the suburbs will get them to back hometown candidate Obama. They might enjoy the idea of the first U.S. president ever who had strong ties to Chicago’s Democratic organization, particularly if their City Hall sources can help them nitpick an actual Obama presidency.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: The American Journalism Review (http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=3750) tried a few years ago to get to the heart of the issue as to whether or not newspaper endorsements actually sway voters.

This is how political campaigns like to use (http://www.hillaryclinton.com/news/release/view/?id=5317) newspaper endorsements.

The internal mechanations of the New York Times endorsement process are explained (http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0108/8096.html) in greater detail.

Following are Obama’s Chicago (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-0127edit1jan27,0,847324.story) and St. Louis (http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/editorialcommentary/story/121FA9A750C5E018862573DC0003A07F?OpenDocument) endorsements, while Clinton’s New York newspaper plug can be found here (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/25/opinion/25fri1.html?_r=1&oref=slogin).