While my 1996 New York City Council campaign may not have lit up the political world, I still scored a Willy Wonka-style golden ticket: The New York Times editorial interview. Running as a Republican, even on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, was still running in enemy Democratic territory—doubly so at Times headquarters. Undeterred, my consultant prepped me: don’t worry about discussing lower crime during the Giuliani years, improving business conditions, or decreasing taxes. All they care about is public campaign financing. Also, nobody is going to see this; the Times’ own research shows that only 8% of people read the editorial page.
And
there it was—I was just going through a clickbait exercise, even before there
was such a thing as clickbait.
The
point, as the numbers pointed out, wasn’t for the legions of readers to go to
the polls with my name burned in their minds from the editorial page. The point
was to talk about the endorsement, as if the election gods had now
spread their fairy dust of approval. The morning after editorial endorsements
came out, candidates would print up stickers to slap on their signs and send
out fundraising mailers heralding the news. Of course this was for a very
select audience. Miguel the bodega owner in Spanish Harlem didn’t read the Times,
probably didn’t even sell it, and cared more about lowering crime, improving
business conditions, and keeping his hard-earned money. Miguel didn’t know public
campaign financing even existed.
All
of this comes to mind with major newspapers stopping their editorial endorsements. Conservative critics see this as mere window dressing, a small concession to hide the blatant
bias behind the overall op-ed section, much less the slant of everyday
reporting. Credit the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post for
going endorse-less. For various reasons the publishers and/or owners of these and
other papers concluded that the business of journalists should be journalism,
not political endorsements. Another way of putting it is that democracy doesn’t
die in darkness, but newspapers do when they can’t pay their electricity bills.
And the business of newspapers is not thriving. Economically, the biggest
losers in all of this are the political consultants and PR folks now that “editorial
endorsement outreach” is one less fee they can charge their clients. But worry
not for this working class; there’s an endless stream of Instagram postings,
polling research, and other activities to make up for the lost income.
Worry,
however, for the journalists. Not worry for the people, but the profession. Writers
for both the LA Times and Washington Post went ballistic.
Editorial board members resigned. Cries of how dare the owner commit the act of
making a business decision rang out. If it all sounds like petulant children
crying because nap time was over, or any college student complaining that their
avocado toast wasn’t both organic and certified sustainable, you would be
right. But what would you expect? These same elite coddled children who need even
more coddling (a.k.a. “support”) in their elite colleges are now the ones
posing as journalists. They forgot that Marx’s maxim of the workers owning the
means of production stopped at the classroom and capitalism started when Jeff
Bezos started writing your Washington Post paycheck.
As
for the Times, they proudly declared that they would no longer make
endorsements except for major national races. As only the Times could,
they perfectly encapsulated both their hypocrisy and entitlement. New York is
not worthy of their time, just the entire nation. They’ll continue their tradition
of avoiding reality (remember their second endorsement of David Dinkins
for mayor in the 1993 race) to maintain their self-defined moral superiority. A
part of me will miss this messy scrum of local politics—for little campaigns it
was a small chance to shine. For my own race, the outrage from my friends and
family wasn’t over my opponent getting the expected endorsement but that the Times
accused me of being a lawyer. Even back then, fact checking at the Times wasn’t
a big thing.
On
the upside, without spending time on editorial endorsements, maybe journalists will
focus on all the news that’s fit to print. Some people might even buy that
paper.
©
2024 Alexander W. Stephens, All Rights Reserved.
