Blue Monday

I think that I may have overestimated the Blue Jackets this year. I'm still grumpy about blowing a two-goal lead in the third and losing to Vancouver, and letting a 5-2 lead with under five minutes left turn into a 5-4 nail biter the next night in Chicago. Hmmm, perhaps a warning to Ohio Dems, "you can't sit on a lead when you're still weeks away from an election?"

Anyway, I spent all of my daughter's nap times this weekend working on a post that still isn't ready. Argh. So all I've got this morning are links, updates, and some musings on media:

If the only newspapers you read are dailies, you might be missing a bunch of relevant and interesting campaign coverage. For instance, Suburban News Publications (publisher of the Bexley News, among other suburban weeklies), has this profile of Emily Kreider. This Week, which publishes its own collection of suburban newsweeklies, including This Week: Bexley (and is part of the Dispatch Media conglomerate), has a Q&A article with both Kreider and Goodman providing stances on issues.

Even larger races, such as Shamansky's campaign to represent OH-12, get more attention in the weeklies.

What's particularly interesting to me is the difference between the Dailies' idea of fair election coverage and the weeklies' approach. The Dailies attempt to be an authoritative, but objective voice. For example, the Dispatch has a feature on its OhioElects site that I check fairly frequently called AdWatch, (speaking of which, the Dispatch followed up on the re-appearing anti-Sykes ad!) which looks similar in many ways to the format of FactCheck.org. These commentaries mean to act as neutral referees.

The weeklies, on the other hand, seem to operate as relatively 'hands-off' conduits for campaign information and spin. They can get away with this by providing equal opportunities for candidates to express themselves. Unlike the owner of the slogan, they really seem to hold the philosophy: "We report, you decide."

Both approaches provide distorted views of reality. I'm still not sure which I actually prefer. I think it's pretty interesting, though, as people debate the relative merits and influence of traditional media vs. 'new media' like blogs, that community weeklies are never really considered, and they probably make a much better comparison for most blogs than big daily papers do.