Swing States Project
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May 18, 2012 11:03 AM
The entirely predictable failure of Americans Elect
A little poli-sci—or just recent history—would have helped pundits avoid the hype
On Thursday, the board of Americans Elect folded its presidential nominating process after the set of declared candidates repeatedly failed to muster the support required to receive the group's backing. Despite spending $35 million on "swank offices", a fancy website, and expensive ballot access drives, Americans Elect ultimately attracted neither a credible candidate nor widespread support.
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May 18, 2012 07:31 AM
The Obama camp serves up a Bain story
Some local outlets take the bait, while others offer a closer look
NEVADA — One of the moments in the 2012 presidential race that we all know was coming arrived this week: the Obama campaign launched its first round of attacks on Mitt Romney over his tenure at Bain Capital.
Unsurprisingly, there was a swing-state emphasis to the offensive. In addition to new TV commercials and a website targeting “Romney economics,” the President’s people organized...
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May 17, 2012 03:14 PM
Out of the living room, onto the trail
To gauge what’s really happening in the TV ad war, reporters need to talk to voters
The Living Room War was launched this week—the ferocious bombardment of attack ads that will make turning on a television in an up-for-grabs state like Ohio a high-risk, wear-a-metal-helmet venture for the next 25 weeks until Election Day.
But to cover the biggest TV advertising blitz in American political history smartly and to understand its strategic implications, reporters and pundits counter-intuitively will need to...
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May 16, 2012 03:30 PM
Debating Amendment One in North Carolina
Faced with an opportunity to lead civic discussion and take a stand, some papers fare better than others
NORTH CAROLINA — Last week, North Carolina voters overwhelmingly passed Amendment One to the state constitution, defining marriage as between one man and one woman only. The May 8 vote—coming a day before President Obama’s declaration of support for gay marriage—produced renewed national debate about gay marriage as well as jokes portraying this state as backwards.
Amendment One supporters said the measure was...
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May 15, 2012 06:50 AM
For TV, campaigns create big winners, (relative) losers
Political ads may not be all "gravy" for local stations—but they're still an awfully good deal
When Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum suspended his presidential campaign last month, the former Pennsylvania senator all but sealed Mitt Romney’s easy victory in the state’s April 24 primary.
Santorum also dashed the expectations of his home state’s broadcasters, who were counting on the candidate to keep the race competitive and their ad inventory—much of which had already been reserved by Romney’s campaign—in high demand.
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May 14, 2012 11:29 AM
Pushing back, making connections
Michigan political reporters have a job to do
MICHIGAN — Quinn Klinefelter is a longtime news editor at WDET, the National Public Radio station in Detroit. His voice is easily recognizable, and so, apparently, is his face. Klinefelter recalls walking down a block, absorbed in his thoughts, when he passed a man he’d never met. They were several yards past each other when the man turned back and yelled, “Kill the newsman! Kill...
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May 11, 2012 03:42 PM
In Nevada, a candidate’s fecklessness on full display
Some sharp interview questions leave a congressional hopeful squirming
NEVADA — In this state, where it’s legal to carry an unconcealed handgun, John Oceguera, the Speaker of the Nevada Assembly, didn’t even need to unholster his pistol to shoot himself in the foot.
He’d probably prefer to imagine taking aim at the messengers—the political journalists who roasted him on two television programs, and in print, this week.
Oceguera, a Democrat, is running to unseat...
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May 10, 2012 12:07 PM
Mapmaker, mapmaker, make me a map…
A glut of "swing-state" stories risks inspiring false certainty about the coming election
For a newspaper that believes that a decent fraction of its readers know that Kurt Weill wrote the music for The Threepenny Opera (51 Down in Wednesday’s Crossword), The New York Times curiously assumes complete amnesia when it comes to presidential campaigns. The hanging-chad long count in Florida that decided the 2000 election—down the memory hole. The 60,000-vote shift in Ohio in 2004 that would...
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May 10, 2012 12:20 AM
In Ohio, political money gets around
Dayton Daily News shows how local lawmakers shuffle campaign donations to cash-strapped colleagues
OHIO—A thorough peek behind a curtain of campaign cash this week by the Dayton Daily News shed real light on one way that political money moves.
The newspaper, in a story crafted by Jeremy P. Kelley, walked readers through the legal, but perhaps not widely-known, practices by which money donated to a candidate on cruise control is diverted to another fighting for his...
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May 9, 2012 11:15 AM
A (blurry) snapshot of influence peddling
Finding out who paid $10,000 to party with Congress members remains a reporting challenge
COLORADO—A CBS News undercover video of a Republican fundraiser earlier this year gave viewers a tantalizing glimpse of a $10,000-a-head political shindig at one of the most exclusive resorts in the country.
The sometimes-grainy footage showed a dozen GOP congressmen in shorts and sandals enjoying a sun-splashed weekend at the Ocean Reef Club in Key Largo, Florida.
“But they didn't come alone,” Sharyl...
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May 8, 2012 12:00 PM
Obama ‘evolves,’ Romney ‘flip-flops’
As the candidates’ positions change, reporters construct differing narratives
NEW HAMPSHIRE—Are Barack Obama and Mitt Romney so different after all? Despite the media’s portrayal of Romney as a uniquely craven politician, the recent controversy over Obama’s views on gay marriage highlights the ways that both candidates—like nearly all politicians—have adjusted their positions over their careers for political reasons.
On Sunday’s Meet the Press, Vice President Joe Biden made unexpected news by saying...
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May 8, 2012 11:30 AM
Reporting on the hand that feeds
In North Carolina, TV news reporters find stories in their stations’ political ad buy data
NORTH CAROLINA—On April 27, the Federal Communications Commission made what CJR called “a good step toward transparency in the realm of money and politics” by ruling that local TV stations must move online their paper data on political ad buys. Network-affiliated stations in the top 50 markets will have to do this likely in the next few months; other stations...
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May 4, 2012 04:05 PM
The Rubio romance
For the national press, a harder look is in order
FLORIDA — Much of the national media appears to be in love with Florida’s junior senator—Republican Marco Rubio. Back on March 23, Chris Cillizza of The Washington Post wrote about potential vice-presidential running mates for Republican nominee Mitt Romney and offered this gushing assessment:
The case for Rubio is simple and close to conclusive. He’s Hispanic, giving the GOP an opportunity to reestablish...
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May 4, 2012 11:48 AM
New rules on political ads: how to mine them
Finding gold may require a group effort
A gold mine of data will soon be available to help make our political system more transparent, thanks to the Federal Communication Commission. But this gold will be useless unless it’s extracted, shaped, and polished.
Let’s first review what the FCC did—and did not do—last week. Local TV stations already collect information about political advertising; the FCC required that they move these paper...
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About the
Swing States Project
Throughout the 2012 election season, CJR reporters on the ground in key states will watchdog local press coverage of political rhetoric and money in politics.
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Desks
The Audit Business
- A game of telephone fools the Times And the newspaper-of-record short-arms the correction
- Audit notes: Questions for JPMorgan, hindsight journalism, Ticketmaster Jesse Eisinger asks what and when Dimon & Co. knew about the bank’s big loss
The Observatory Science
- USA Today’s oily, gassy rainbow Detailed cover story a bit too rosy about ‘energy independence’
- Attachment parenting, detached debate Time’s titillating cover overshadows article’s substance
Campaign Desk Politics & Policy
- The entirely predictable failure of Americans Elect A little poli-sci—or just recent history—would have helped pundits avoid the hype
- The Obama camp serves up a Bain story Some local outlets take the bait, while others offer a closer look
Behind the News The Media
Blog
The Kicker last updated: Fri 3:00 PM
- A game of telephone fools the Times
- What Warren Buffett sees in local newspapers
- Don’t take my traditional Internet away!
- Why China ejected Melissa Chan
- Seattle news site PubliCola is out of business
