So did the political endorsements work?

Since I'm not feeling particularly creative today, I thought I would focus on a topic that I wrote about 2 blogs ago. If you can remember, I found an article that claimed political endorsements in newspapers do not influence public opinion. I think the topic of political endorsements and whether or not editors should allow them is particularly interesting.

I found a website that keeps track of all the newspaper political endorsements for the 2008 election (they have 2004 on there too). It's a very interesting website if you are interested in this topic, so check it out! Since I can't spend an hour plus on this blog with two exams coming up tomorrow, I only looked at all the states that McCain won and who their newspapers endorsed. Here is what I found:

MT- 3 papers Obama
SD- 2 papers McCain
ND- 2 papers McCain
NE- 4 papers McCain
KS- 1 McCain, 2 Obama
OK- 2 Obama, 4 McCain
TX- 8 Obama, 13 McCain
LA- 2 Obama, 1 McCain
ID- 1 Obama, 1 McCain
WY- 1 Obama
UT- 1 Obama, 1 McCain
AZ- 1 Obama, 2 McCain
AR- 1 Obama, 2 McCain
MS- 2 Obama
AL- 8 Obama, 6 McCain
GA- 3 Obama, 2 McCain
SC- 1 Obama, 5 McCain
TN- 2 Obama, 4 McCain
KY- 3 Obama, 3 McCain
WV- 3 Obama, 2 McCain
AK- 1 Obama, 1 McCain

McCain did come out on top most of the time, but Obama received a good amount of support from newspapers in red states. So that would make it seem that political endorsements don't work. But a good editor should never just look at that and accept that conclusion. An editor should look at what parts of the states these Obama-endorsing newspapers were from. Because there is a possibility that they are from counties that did vote Obama, but more counties voted McCain. If that was the case, political endorsements could have made a difference.

For the sake of time, I'm not going to look into all 50 plus newspapers and their county. I just wanted all of you to be aware of this website and the fact that political endorsements in newspapers may or may not work. Just remember that just looking at the up front statistics aren't enough, the deeper research could show us a totally different story! Like our class has taught us, always make sure your reporter did ALL the research before coming to his/her conclusion.

Front Pages after the Election

I'm a very, very visual person so large pictures really appeal to me. It doesn't hurt that I'm a HUGE Obama supporter and campaign intern, so being able to see the big picture with the text "Obama Wins" is something I've been waiting for since the primaries. But color always appeals to people's eyes so a big picture of Obama on the front page is going to catch your eye more than a front page with a lot of text.

I really like the Chicago Tribune's front page: There is a huge picture with the text "Obama. Our Next President". But there also is a little bit of text at the bottom, talking about his speech at Grant Park.

But not a fan of the Red Eye, because the picture by itself makes it not look like a newspaper. I think it needs a headline. Same with the Chicago Sun-Times.

I also love large headlines that would stand out if you're walking by a news stand like the Post-Tribune in Indiana or Lawrence Journal-World in Kansas. Where I think papers like The Dodge City Daily Globe in Kansas or Bemidji Pioneer in Minnesota need much larger headlines. I guess the Pulizter/Hearst style journalism appeals to me!

I looked at red state newspapers vs. blue state newspapers and there was no real trend. The only paper that was VERY different from most of the 20-some I looked at was the Christian Science Monitor in Massachusetts. There is no mention of Obama winning on the front page. You'd think that this would be the biggest news on November 5th, so the fact that they didn't mention it is very weird. Why do you guys think they didn't deem it front page news?

J-school cirriculum

The question Amy Gahran posed: Should j-schools be partnering more closely with other academic departments in order to impart to students a more current and relevant skill set and mindset? If so, what are the obstacles to that cooperation, and how can they be overcome?

I would LOVE for our journalism department to work with other academic departments. It would very cool if we could have a class in which we wrote specifically for a topic that different departments focus on. If I had my way, I would write about animals and anything associated with the topic of animals for each story I had to write throughout my entire four years here. So if the Journalism department worked with the Animal Science department, I would have been able to take a class in which I learned more in depth information about animal sciences so I could be a better writer in that field. Same goes for sports lovers (kinesiology) or political mavericks (political science).

To have a class like that would be fantastic for people who wanted to be copy editors. We only have two copy editing classes in the whole journalism curriculum: this one and Magazine editing. And this teaches us very basic editing, so it would be very beneficial if we were able to take a class to learn about the topic we are interested in copy editing for. For example, by learning the veterinary lingo or more information about animals in general, I'd be able to edit stories about it and understand the topic and the "fancy" words.

One of the people whom left a comment said:

"With all due respect, the younger folk aren't really as tech savvy as some assume. Yes, they know email, Facebook, Youtube, IM and Limewire. But... With all due respect, the younger folk aren't really as tech savvy as some assume. Yes, they know email, Facebook, Youtube, IM and Limewire. But most of them don't know, or seem to care, about blogging, twitter, alternative online media, audio and video storytelling, why links matter, etc."

I do agree with him that many of us really don't know a whole lot about the Internet past the normal college websites. But he gives this as a reason that we don't need the classes, where I think this is THE reason we need classes about computer science and business. I know NOTHING about that kind of stuff and if the department required that I took a class like that, I would only be the better for it.

The biggest obstacle is going to be money, like everyone else said. Also, willingness from professors to spend a lot of extra time trying to start the program. If universities could gain the money needed and the passion from their professors for this type of project, I think the improvements they would see in their graduating students would be immense. I know it will never happen in my time here, but we already see it slowly with the online class and the News-Gazette class. Even this class has introduced me to a new medium I've never used: blogging!