With just hours left in this crazy campaign, there is more speculation than ever as to who the man will be that runs this country for the next four years.  Everyone seems to have his or her own input, and major news sources are not exempt.  As to the effectiveness or relevance of newspaper endorsements, I cannot hazard a guess.  But what I do know is that the media is expected to remain largely neutral (see “professionalism”), and this is one of the few times that newspapers outright declare which candidate it supports.  Gone are the façades of political agendas wrapped in rhetoric – this is a display of newspapers taking a stance in the final hour.

I compared two very different news sources from geographically diverse locations, and with very different audiences: The Baltimore Sun and The Daily Herald.  Each newspaper endorsed one candidate and one candidate only.

The Baltimore Sun, as many other newspapers seemed to do, endorsed President Barack Obama for re-election with more than just a hint of concern.  This concern sprung out of many unfulfilled promises and blunders of the Obama administration over the last four years.  One of the biggest issues touched upon was the divide between our two parties in this political system we have adopted as our own.  At the beginning of the article, although the Baltimore Sun supports the president, Obama’s shortcomings were laid out one by one, ending with the statement saying, “…most disappointingly, the promise of a new politics to move us beyond a long and bitter partisan divide remains painfully unfulfilled,” in regards to the president’s last term.  The Baltimore Sun concluded, “We endorse President Obama for re-election, with this caution: We can’t afford four more years of gridlock. Perhaps Republicans will be more willing to work with a second-term President Obama, perhaps they won’t, but the buck stops with him.”  Essentially, the Sun states that we must overcome the party divides and collaborate to actually bolster this weak economy that our country is grappling with now.  Again, by stressing the importance of bipartisanship or bust, the Baltimore Sun warily cast their endorsement vote for Obama.

The Daily Herald, on the other hand, seemed more sure in their decision to endorse Mitt Romney in this election.  It is important to note that this Chicago suburb newspaper backed Senator Obama just four years ago at this time.  This article walked through the decision-making process of switching across the aisle in their endorsement.  However, rather than point fingers to simply make the opponent look bad, the Herald gave a fair account, saying “Whomever is elected will be trusted in large measure with the fate of a stumbling economy, a foreboding debt crisis, a gridlocked government and an unstable world.”  And while this article was fair, it clearly outlined the differences between the candidates: “… it is clear that one trusts government too much; the other appears to trust it too little.”  In the end, however, the Daily Herald could not dispute the fact that the economic crisis is at the forefront of American concerns, saying, “Ultimately, we endorse Romney because he, unlike Obama, understands that jobs are a creation of business, not of government.”

In this brief pause in American political history – the calm before the storm, or at least the ceasing of winds for the time being – gives rise to some interesting commentary from our sources of news.