In defense of newspaper endorsements

Why the editorial board's opinion offers value to readers

(Photo: Ed Tibbetts)

On Sunday, the Quad-City Times—the newspaper where I worked for more than 30 years—announced it would not endorse political candidates this year.

The Times is joining a trend in forgoing endorsements, and I understand the impulse. My former boss, who is no longer at the Times, could attest I did not like the endorsement cycle when I was the newspaper’s editorial page editor.

It was an enormous amount of work to schedule and conduct interviews, to carefully research each of the candidates, work with a politically diverse board to reach a consensus about whom to endorse and then to write the endorsements themselves.

I didn’t mind the work, but I wondered: Why bother? Our influence was limited. Newspaper readership had shrunk dramatically, and I thought my limited time might be better spent doing other tasks.

The boss insisted.

Consequently, I learned during my four-year tenure that there is much to be said for endorsements.

It was a lesson I began to learn shortly after I took the job in 2018.

There was a race to fill a vacancy on a local city council, and the Times did not make an endorsement.

I figured there was little interest by our overall readership. One ward in one city?

Afterward, I got an email from a reader in that city gently chastising us. The reader believed that, with so little information available about the race, an endorsement from the board and an explanation for our decision would be a valuable resource.

I knew the reader wasn’t going to base his decision on our opinion, but he apparently wanted to hear it. He thought others would, too.

I could offer no credible reply. We failed to deliver. I failed to deliver.

In low-information races especially, there is great value in newspaper editorial boards providing not only information about these contests but also the perspective of seasoned opinion journalists who, ideally, are well-informed, open-minded and have their community’s best interests at heart.

Scott County, Iowa, administrative center. (Photo: Ed Tibbetts)

Many of these low-information contests are at the local level this year.

You can find plenty of news and commentary about the races for Congress and president. But coverage of the consequential contests for county offices and the state legislature too often are left to reprinting questionnaires that newspapers send to candidates.

Not all questionnaires are bad. Some are quite good. But too often, the questions—and the answers—are vague and fail to delve into the complexities of local and statewide issues. They also provide little opportunity for follow up.

On the other hand, the endorsement process that uses face-to-face interviews, with all the give-and-take that implies, leads to a greater level of scrutiny.

Many newspapers explain their decision to drop endorsements by saying it is not their role to “tell readers how to vote.” But newspaper endorsements, done correctly, don’t tell readers how to vote. I can’t think of a single predecessor of mine at the Times who believed this was part of the job. One used to say the endorsement process wasn’t about telling readers how to vote but modeling a process. And as editorial page editor myself, I never thought I had the right—or even the ability—to instruct people how to vote.

I’ve lived in the Quad-Cities too long to believe that.

I remember the infamous “Quad-City Times Kiss of Death.”

The phrase, uttered often when I began covering Davenport City Hall in the early 1990s, stemmed from an election cycle in which practically all of the editorial board’s endorsed candidates in a city election fell to defeat.

It was a valuable lesson to me. Most voters in the Quad-Cities, and no doubt elsewhere, too, don’t mindlessly allow the local newspaper to make their decisions for them. But many readers do care about the editorial board’s opinion, even if they sometimes go in the opposite direction.

In explaining the decision not to endorse candidates, Quad-City Times Executive Editor Tom Martin wrote:

In this age of political polarization, endorsements have become less a tool for providing insight and more of a litmus test to see where the newspapers stand politically. When the focus is on the newspaper rather than the candidates then we've missed our mark. Endorsements are meant to persuade voters, and we don't see that as our mission.

But, if they’re done effectively, endorsements aren’t about the newspaper. They’re about communicating with, and serving, readers by offering clear insight into the candidates. Newspapers may not be able to fully control how their endorsements are seen by the public, but this should not necessitate abandoning them. And as far as endorsements as a litmus test, a reader would be quite confused about the partisan positioning of the Quad-City Times if they looked at its record of endorsements at the state and local level over the past 30 years.

In the time that I worked there, the Times editorial board scattered its endorsements between the two parties.

Are endorsements meant to persuade voters? Sure, they are.

Naturally, this should not be the mission of a newspaper’s non-partisan newsroom, which must operate separately, and as independently as possible, of the editorial board. But there is nothing wrong with editorial boards trying to make their case for a candidate on the editorial page. This is why many columnists write opinion pieces at election time; it is why many people write letters to the editor.

I see it much like families debating politics at the dining room table.

Is each person trying to convince the others? Of course. Why shouldn’t the host also take part?

I suspect newspapers will continue moving away from endorsements. Once begun, these kinds of trends tend not to reverse. And as the Associated Press said in an article about this subject, “many news organizations simply have fewer people to do the work.”

I understand. Hard choices need to be made.

Still, it is my hope that the newspaper I served for more than three decades will bring back endorsements, especially for state and local races. It is important for a trusted news source to provide well-researched information to readers about candidates for public office and—yes—to offer an opinion about which are best suited to hold office.

This may not be one of the top reasons why people read a local newspaper, but it does give them added value. When that reason disappears, readers have one less reason to care what the newspaper has to say.

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