Salzman: How endorsements get made

News, Post editors lay it out, but improvements suggested

Published November 25, 2006 at midnight

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Just prior to the 2004 election, a small group of protesters stood in front of The Denver Post building and blamed Post publisher Dean Singleton for the Post's endorsement of George Bush.

It wasn't reported at the time, but Singleton did, in fact, reverse the decision of the Post's editorial board, which had unanimously backed John Kerry, Singleton told me last week.

No shock there, given that the Post did everything it could to imply that Singleton mandated the endorsement, without explicitly saying so.

But here's something that surprised me: Singleton says he reversed just one other editorial board endorsement at the Post over 19 years, even though he occasionally disagrees with the Post's endorsements. He mandated the paper's backing of Bill Owens in 1998.

I thought Singleton and John Temple, publisher of the Rocky Mountain News, routinely told their respective staffs whom to endorse.

But it doesn't work that way.

After evaluating the candidates, the members of the News editorial board agree most of the time, says News Editorial Pages Editor Vincent Carroll. (Carroll, Temple and three editorial writers constitute the board.)

If they don't agree, Carroll and Temple decide. And if those two disagree?

"It rarely happens on a significant editorial. And I can't think of an example where we had a disagreement that left either of us feeling terrible about the end result," said Carroll, adding that the endorsements are based on the newspaper's principles that both agree on.

"If I sense that John feels strongly about making a particular argument, I'll probably defer," says Carroll. "I don't make a big stink about always having my way. But I sense that he accommodates me, too. Ultimately he's the guy who makes the call."

Temple says that during his five-year tenure as publisher, "I don't believe I've ever overturned an endorsement. It hasn't needed to come to that."

At the Post, Editor of the Editorial Pages Jon Wolman has guided his editorial board, consisting of editorial page staff plus Singleton and Wolman, to consensus on all endorsements during his two-plus years at the job, he wrote in an e-mail.

"Usually the consensus emerges without bloodshed but on occasion we'll let the matter germinate a little bit - If at first we don't succeed, we'll try, try again," Wolman wrote.

As Wolman put it, "Deadlines have a way of focusing our discussion." (Wolman's predecessor oversaw votes by the board, according to Singleton, and Wolman wrote that a vote is "always an option" if consensus fails.)

Wolman added: "Dean gets involved in all the endorsements, perhaps more or less depending upon his familiarity or his interest. He and I go round and round a bit, and when it makes sense I'll describe his position to the board."

For more details about the dailies' endorsement processes, check out Wolman's and Temple's columns in October of 2006 and 2004 respectively.

Here are two ways the dailies can make their endorsements more persuasive, especially because they obviously reflect the views of fairly like-minded people.

First, if the publisher overrides a decision of the editorial board, he or she should tell readers what happened and why.

Second, the dailies should select a couple of races in every election and record the entire endorsement process, including candidate interviews and subsequent internal debate. This recording should be posted on the dailies' Web sites.

Opinion vs. news. As publishers, both Singleton and Temple are in charge of their paper's endorsement decisions. But both say endorsements do not affect news coverage.

Noam Chomsky argues that even if reporters aren't told what to write, they self-censor their work to conform with the views of the boss.

Though Chomsky is undoubtedly right to a degree, it's not that simple.

Singleton pointed out that on the same day that the Post endorsed Bill Ritter, it ran a front-page piece attacking Ritter for plea-bargaining with immigrants.

Endorsements matter. Jennifer Duffy, editor of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, says that the bigger the race, the less influence newspaper endorsements have on the outcome.

Early endorsements can give candidates credibility, like the News' endorsement of John Hickenlooper seemed to do in the 2003 Denver mayoral race.

In addition, according to Duffy, political campaigns use endorsements strategically to appeal to a specific group of people.

Using a hypothetical example, Duffy explained that if the Ritter campaign felt it wasn't doing well among Denver women, and the campaign determined through focus groups or polling that Denver women feel warmly toward The Denver Post, the Ritter campaign could produce ads targeted at Denver women and featuring the Post's endorsement of Ritter.

"Green" Wal-Mart? Wal-Mart is adding energy-saving lighting to its freezer cases. Nowhere else. Just the freezer cases.

The News (Nov. 14) was so impressed by this announcement that it published a story with a headline that could have been written by Wal-Mart's formidable PR division: "Wal-Mart's energy-saving store model expanding across the nation."

The News informed us that the energy-saving technology was tested in a Wal-Mart in Aurora and another "green" store in Texas.

News reporters should go to China, sniff around Wal-Mart's manufacturing facilities there, and report back on whether any Wal-Mart store should be labeled "green."

Jason Salzman, president of Cause Communications and board chairman of Rocky Mountain Media Watch, is the author of Making the News: A Guide for Activists and Nonprofits. Reach him at salzmanj@RockyMountainNews.com.

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