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Aug022008

Candidate op-eds: Yes or no?

Filed under Uncategorized by nick pappas at 7:34 pm

Is a community newspaper obligated to allocate space on its Opinion pages to candidates for state and federal office so they can write op-ed pieces on the topics of their choice?

What about their surrogates?

These are among the issues I have been fretting over as we near the stretch run – 93 days and counting – to Election Day on Nov. 4. Not to mention the state primary, which is only 37 days away on Sept. 9.

And I’m still fretting.

My response up to this point has been pretty noncommittal, in part because space is so precious (read: limited) on these pages.

For the most part, I’ve been able to stop short of saying no without opening the proverbial Pandora’s box by actually running any of them in the newspaper.

Well, the time has come to fish or cut bait, as they say, which is why I am once again reaching out to you for some guidance.

Before you decide, here is a sampling of what I’m talking about, starting with the most recent offering that arrived Friday afternoon:

  • U.S. Rep. Paul Hodes writing about the nation’s energy policy.
  • Joe Keefe, a former chairman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party, responding to a piece by syndicated columnist Froma Harrop that he felt was “neither fair nor accurate” about Democratic nominee-in-waiting Sen. Barack Obama.
  • Jeanne Shaheen, our former governor and now U.S. Senate candidate, writing about the needs of middle-class families.
  • Bruce Yarwood, president and chief executive officer of the American Health Care Association, and John Poirier, president and CEO of the New Hampshire Health Care Association, praising U.S. Sen. John E. Sununu for “standing up to protect New Hampshire seniors’ Medicare benefits.”
  • And attorney Chuck Douglas, a former congressman and now co-chairman for John Stephen’s congressional campaign, waxing poetic about opponent Jeb Bradley’s “hypocrisy” and how it “undermines trust in political leaders.”

OK, you get the idea.

My quandary is twofold: newsworthiness and space, though not necessarily in that order.

Unlike larger newspapers across the country, The Telegraph publishes only one Opinion page Monday through Saturday and two pages Sunday. The daily page and the first of two Sunday pages generally consist of the editorial, an op-ed column from one of our syndicated columnists (OK, today that’s me), an editorial cartoon and letters from our readers.

On Sunday, when we have a second page like today, we traditionally run the Statehouse Watch grid, our rotating local columnists (John Bachman, Paul Sylvain, Joe Konopka and reader advocate Gary Vincent) and then a “guest commentary” – which has been open to everyone from state and federal officials to experts across a broad spectrum of topics.

But the “guest commentary” was put on temporary hold five weeks ago when I began reserving that slot for Annenberg Political Fact Check (factcheck.org), a nonpartisan group based at the University of Pennsylvania that does just that: fact-checks many of the claims emanating from the two presidential campaigns.

Today’s examination of a Planned Parenthood ad critical of Sen. John McCain represents the sixth we have published to date – three each defending McCain and Obama from spurious attacks from each other, their parties or outside groups.

In fact, just to make sure I wasn’t the only reader who can’t get enough of that kind of analysis, I sent an e-mail query last weekend to members of our Reader Advisory Network to determine whether they felt the same way.

Of those who responded, the verdict was nearly unanimous.

“Please keep putting them into the paper,” wrote Lisa Eastland, of Nashua. “It is difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff and it sure helps to have someone helping with the task!”

In summary, then, here are all the pieces in play – that is, what would have to go in order to accommodate these candidate/surrogate opinion pieces:

The daily editorial; the daily nationally syndicated column (Ann McFeatters, Froma Harrop, Cal Thomas, etc.); the editorial cartoon; letters to the editor; the Sunday rotation of local columnists; the weekly Statehouse Watch feature (which details not only what happened to various bills during the most recent legislative session, but how our Greater Nashua legislators voted); and the aforementioned factcheck.org article.

There is another option: just publishing them online on our “NH Campaigns 2008” Web page, which soon will be joined by our online Voter Guide.

Currently, that page consists of a running archive of election-related stories, as well as a list of candidates running for governor, Congress, the New Hampshire Statehouse, Executive Council and county posts in Hillsborough County.

Or we can just not run them at all – neither in print nor online.

So what say you?

Nick Pappas is editorial page editor at The Telegraph. He can be reached at 594-6505 or npappas@nashuatelegraph.com.

Viewing 12 Comments

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    I think it important to hear from all the candidates, is there a way you could suspend the regular Sunday columns for a while, and run candidate's columns? It would be good if you could limit the length of their submissions, perhaps running two short ones each Sunday?


    This is, as they all are, a very important election, and it's vital to the democratic process that we make up our own minds about the candidates. Hearing from them directly would further this aim.

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    Yes, an informed electorate is critical...and not even about the candidates, but the issues. I like it when Newspapers print opinion, ideas and from more than just the two "front runners" from the major parties. Yes, in fact come of the independent "fringe" ideas are the best.....so I would lean toward being as inclusive as possible..... with an eye toward informed opinion and new ideas. (yea, when we talk candidates, negative critique and name calling come right to mind....but I suppose we have to take the bad with the good too)

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    Because of the space limitations - I would recommend The Telegraph placing a line, indicating the Op Ed subject, author and where a reader could view it On-line for full text.


    In this way, The Telegraph would be fulfilling its important role in informing citizens of critical views of all candidates who request Op Ed space, while not clogging its printed pages.

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    Nick ,

    I agree for those who don't get to see the candidate in person, then the opinion columns are a way to allow the readewr tro be informed. You shoud reserve ther right however to eliiminate any personal attacks.

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    I feel the "ads" should be allowed to be printed, no matter how biased they may be. My only concern, would

    that they be identified as from a candidate or one of their surrogates.

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    Nick

    Istongly oppose cancelling any current op-ed material to make room for candidate letters. Candidates are adequately funded to fillour mailboxes and the air waves with their statements. Any prospective voter interested in learning of a candidate's pitch jas only to read his own incoming mail


    Furthermore your excellent fact checking columns already expose the candidates positions on many important issues should readers not have encountered them elsewhere


    It strikes me as a subversion of basic editorial independence norms toprovide candidates free space on your editorial pages. Let them buy their space in the advertising section.


    That said oit may be OK to publish candidates brief and specific objections to any editorial criticism of them the Telegraph may have published

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    I think these articles should be published provided they contain the position and plans of the candidates with regard to specific issues. You should reserve the right to reject any submital that is just more of the same negative attacks on their opponents. We get enough of that through their ads and public statements. I would make space by dropping the rotating local columnists which sometimes are themselves partisan political opinions. For example I thought it highly inappropriate for the "reader advocate" to twice use that space to make partisan attacks on one of the presidential candidates.

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    The Editorial staff of the Telegraph has a liberal leftist bent that colors all of the stories that run in the paper. Who will monitor the staff of the paper to insure they are not slanting coverage of the candidates? Case in point: For almost two weeks now it has been in the news that John Edwards has been having an affair on his wife who has cancer. The story first broke while Obama was on his so called earth shattering worldwide tour. To protect Obama and the democratic party the Telegraph has refused to cover this. This is front page news. Rest assured if Edwards had been a republican the paper would have tarred and feathered him and made this an ongoing major story. Liberals are just like alchoholics-they both deny they have a problem. The bottom line in all this-yes it is ok to run editorials from both the candidates and their followers. The paper should expand the letters they print from three a day to at least fifteen. |(Like the union leader does!)

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    Please DON'T open Pandora's box, and run these (when you think they are worthy) in the print edition! These candidates are already covered in news stories, and I wouldn't want their pitches to voters to clog up op-ed space.


    I have no objections to your running candidate/surrogate articles running online.

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    Do not ever consider elimnating your editorials. Do not consider eliminating ltrs to the editor. The only space I can see as optional is the cartoon space. I think these candidate articles should be linked online only. Provide the link and let the voter pursue it if there is an interest.

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    I would not want to remove your own editorials to read things that I can read elsewhere (candidate web pages), so I would recommend having the candidate op-eds on the online edition only. Thank you.

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    The only pieces I would consider worthy of print are from the candidates themselves. Interest groups and the party can buy space or use their surrogates for LTEs like they usually do. Feel free to limit the length, but part of a newspaper's job is to inform the public. Back in the good old days, newspapers used to publish entire political speeches and dedicate huge amounts of coverage to all the candidates. Sadly, MSM coverage of elections has become a joke. At least with local candidates a local paper can improve the situation. And do post them online, since fewer and fewer people read the print edition.

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