Journalism and American Democracy

There is a great website by the American Presidency Project that compares the endless newspaper endorsements that have been flying out in the last week. It shows the 34 endorsements for Obama compared to the 28 for Romney. It shows the higher total number of circulation under the Obama newspaper endorsements than the Romney ones. And it also shows the unique trend of newspapers (current number sitting at 10) that endorsed Obama in 2008 but now endorse Governor Romney. It is understandable that many of these newspapers have flip flopped after seeing a slower than promised comeback of the economy. I happened to be more intrigued by the 1 lone newspaper that flip flopped the other way – The San Antonio Express News – and the newspaper that is probably the most predictable in presidential endorsements (even more so now for their native son), The Chicago Tribune.
Most Texas metropolitan newspapers – like The Houston Chronicle and The Star Telegram (Fort Worth) – surprisingly endorsed Obama in 2008 but this year chose to endorse Romney and those other Texas newspapers that endorsed McCain in 2008 stayed with the party ticket. Except for the San Antonio Express News. The Chicago Tribune and the Sun-Times (which no longer endorses) had both decided to back Senator Obama in 2008 and to be honest, there was really no other choice for the two major newspapers of the candidate’s political hometown. The San Antonio Express News headlined their endorsement with the statement that “Obama has earned a second term” – a surprising divergence from the general theme of this campaign season, that Obama may not have done great but he’s still better than that other guy. The Tribune is more harsh on the president. The article references the list of reasons it gave in 2008 for why they endorsed Obama and one by one graded the president’s performance over the past years and whether he proved them right. The Tribune cited his decisiveness, which shined through in his expert handling of foreign affairs. The Express-News is equally as praising towards his foreign policy. The Tribune originally believed in his bipartisan appeal though, which both papers cited as a true failure of the president’s last four years. But surprisingly the papers differ in their general message. The Express News is optimistic, recognizing the handicap Obama deserves due to the mess he inherited and is extremely impressed by his immigration reform – an important issue to the state of Texas. The Tribune goes in depth about how Romney is a viable candidate for president due to and how the president never came through on the “change” he promised. It can be seen as a sort of lesson of “tough love” for Chicago’s native son. Both papers however reach their conclusion for Obama within the same vein as the rest of America – that he is the lesser of two evils. Romney raises skepticism with his tax plan and his big business past. Interestingly enough, the San Antonio Express-News never references its previous endorsement, as if it never happened. It is intriguing to think about the reason why they flip flopped but the reader will never know for sure. With the Tribune, their justification for past endorsements and reasons for the current endorsement are laid out in a clear, transparent way. This is much more convincing, despite both papers endorsing the same candidate.

While trying to brainstorm two newspapers that can be used to compare wedding announcements, I found myself looking back to my experience in Idaho and how different that area was from my hometown, Chicago. This summer I
Interned with the Nez Perce Reservation near Lewiston, Idaho and I discovered in my old backpack a weathered copy of the reservation newspaper, known as the Tac Tito’oqan. During my time there I had written several articles relating to the region’s environmental and social concerns and read it whenever I could. The Tac Tito’oqan differed greatly from my “hometown” newspaper, the Chicago Tribune. This becomes most evident when reading the wedding announcements. In the Tac Tito’oqan, wedding announcements submitted by the readers are long, detailed and personal. Essentially, they are mini biographies about the two people coming together to be married. A small newspaper with limited readership has the room for such detailed announcements because of lack of potential advertisers and writers. The newspaper itself is very personal, less focused on professionalism. The reservation is large for most reservations but the population is still around 5,000. Everyone knows everybody and the few publics that make up the reservation all overlap. When looking at the wedding announcements I wasn’t surprised to see that every couple was not only Native American but they were all Nez Perce Indian. Non-natives do live on the land but their relationship with the tribe is very stressed and therefore they would never read a native newspaper. Compare all of this to the Chicago Tribune. The first noticeable difference is the length of the announcements. All are very short, factual and to the point. It is also important to point out that I read the wedding announcements in the Tribune on their own web page. Not only does the Tac Tito’oqan lack a separate page for wedding announcements, they lack an entire website. The paper is also distributed monthly. The weddings you see are after an entire month has passed by – the immediacy of information is not as vital. As far as those represented in the announcement, the Tribune displays a diverse constituency. The first three announcements are about a Columbian-american couple, a teacher and a venture capitalist, and a national guardsman marrying his high school sweetheart. The Chicago Tribune is a national, metropolitan newspaper and its readership is very large. It represents thousands of different publics. The Tac Tito’oqan represents small, secluded publics that all interrelate within a culturally separate nation.