Election News Hunt results
The historic U.S. presidential election is finally over, and the longest campaign season on record brought with it unprecedented levels of media attention and news coverage. In the last two weeks, our community joined forces in a News Hunt for good journalism on the 2008 Presidential Election, from October 27 through November 9, 2008.
Together, we reviewed some of the best journalism from the final days of the campaigns and the post-election news, analysis and opinion that followed. Led by our tireless hosts Chris Finnie and Mike LaBonte, we rated 166 stories from 76 publications across the political spectrum. Our News Hunt results suggest that our community exercised sound judgment in separating reality from rhetoric and fact from opinion in this landmark election.
Top Stories
Here's a selection of our top rated stories:
News
The Transformation
New York Times (News Analysis)
Bush's legal legacy to give Obama tough choices
McClatchy (News Analysis)
U.S. hailed again as 'country of dreams'
Washington Post (Special Report)
As economic crisis peaked, tide turned against McCain
Wall Street Journal (News Analysis)
Ten reasons why you should ignore exit polls
FiveThirtyEight (Special Report)
What McCain and Obama didn’t talk about
Foreign Policy (News Analysis)
Final presidential estimate: Obama 55%, McCain 44%
Gallup (Poll)
A sea change for politics as we know it
New York Times (News Analysis)
The 2008 presidential campaign has been like no other
Los Angeles Times (News Analysis)
Chaos looms over Pennsylvania vote
American News Project (News Report)
McCain advisor says voter fraud is a "perception" that "plants seeds of doubt
ProPublica (Investigative Report)
McCain, first, second, and always
New Republic (Investigative Report)
Calling the race to 270
Economist (News Analysis)
Voting equipment changes could get messy on Nov. 4
USA Today (News Report)
The color of news: How different media have covered the general election
Journalism.org (News Analysis)
Why McCain is getting hosed in the press
The Politico (News Analysis)
Opinion
The Test
The New Yorker (Opinion)
It's Time
Economist (Editorial)
An 'idiot wind'
Washington Post (Editorial)
What a long, strange trip it’s been
In These Times (Opinion)
The stakes are high for Barack Obama, but so too are the opportunities
The Guardian (Editorial)
The Republican Rump
New York Times (Opinion)
Republicans fear the loss of their only weapon left: the filibuster
The Independent (Opinion)
Why Barack Obama is winning
Time (Opinion)
Sarah Palin's war on science
Slate (Opinion)
I'm voting for Barack Obama
The American Conservative (Opinion)
For more, check out the full listing of stories from our Presidential
Election news hunt, by rating or
by date.
News Hunt Findings
In total, we submitted 434 stories, of which 166 were rated with 3 or more reviews. From these rated stories, 117 stories came from mainstream sources, while 49 came from independent sources. This was significantly higher than the number of independent stories rated during previous news hunts -- a jump we attribute to the high profile of this historic election.
The New York Times and the Washington Post led the way by far in the number of stories we reviewed -- 17 from the Times and 15 from the Post. Nearly one in five stories we reviewed came from these publications. The Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post and Los Angeles Times were next, posting eight, eight and seven story reviews respectively.
While many of the stories we reviewed in the past two weeks were either news reports or opinions (each category representing 28% of total rated stories), a larger portion than usual were news analysis (19% of total rated stories). As the election entered its final stages -- and Barack Obama's election and transition choices followed -- new information about the candidates gave way to more number crunching, prediction and overview of the election cycle.
When it came to opinion, most political viewpoints were fairly represented. We reviewed opinion pieces from nine sources on the right, nine on the left, and 18 from the center. (This seems on par with a recent election poll by the Associated Press, which found that 22 percent of Americans described themselves as liberal, 44 percent as moderate and 34 percent as conservative -- see this Washington Post article.)
Sources with a neutral viewpoint in their news coverage, such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, BBC News and the Wall Street Journal received average story ratings identical to many center-left and left sources, including Salon, Mother Jones, the Guardian and the Politico, generally between 3.5 and 3.7. Sources from the center-right and right, in contrast, were rated lower on average -- Pajamas Media, Town Hall and the Weekly Standard, for example, all received average ratings of less than 3.2. This could be attributed to a leftward tilt in the NewsTrust community at this time, which we aim to correct in coming months by inviting more participation from reviewers with viewpoints on the right and center. Still, many center sources remained among our most trusted -- including the Economist, the Christian Science Monitor, Gallup, Congressional Quarterly and McClatchy, all above 3.7.
Mainstream and independent media paid particular attention to a handful of subtopics during our two-week News Hunt, reflected in many of our top stories.
Stories on voter purging, long lines, machine malfunction, voter fraud and other concerns about the election process surfaced early on. In 'Chaos looms over Pennsylvania vote,' the independent American News Project confronted public officials over evidence that Philadelphia voters would be scrubbed from voter rosters, and USA Today provided voters with a list of potential setbacks in 'Voting equipment changes could get messy on Nov. 4'. Such problems were reported on election day, but fears of widespread vote-flipping and equipment failure were absent from post-election coverage.
Although much of what we reviewed went beyond the horserace coverage of the election, our community identified several great poll and prediction stories and rated them highly. These included Gallup's 'Final presidential estimate': Obama 55%, McCain 44%' and 'Ten reasons why you should ignore exit polls' by the blog FiveThirtyEight.
Retrospectives on the election made the front pages of most national publications in the week leading up to the election. We identified some of the best as Bill Ayers' 'What a long, strange trip it’s been', the New York Times' 'A sea change for politics as we know it,' and the Los Angeles Times' 'The 2008 presidential campaign has been like no other'.
Some endorsements of Barack Obama by many high-profile and unlikely conservative authors, public figures and publications made it into our top-rated opinion selection. The Economist, a noted fiscally conservative British news magazine, advocated a vote for Obama in an even handed editorial. "The Democratic candidate has clearly shown that he offers the better chance of restoring America’s self-confidence," it read. "But we acknowledge it is a gamble ... Yet it is one America should take, given the steep road ahead." In another highly-rated piece, former Reagan advisor and neoconservative author Francis Fukuyama said: "While John McCain is trying desperately to pretend that he never had anything to do with the Republican Party, I think it would a travesty to reward the Republicans for failure on such a grand scale."
Post-election coverage included an array of analysis and opinion that ranged from insight into why John McCain lost key Republican strongholds to global reactions about Obama's victory. Some of the highest rated stories came from this category, and included: 'As economic crisis peaked, tide turned against McCain,' from the Wall Street Journal; 'Bush’s legal legacy to give Obama tough choices,' from McClatchy; and 'The Transformation,' from the New York Times.
This Week: The Obama Administration News Hunt
NewsTrust on Washington Post
Be sure to visit Spot.Us, a new site that invites readers to pay for local news stories they want to read. This promising initiative in “community funded reporting” is led by our colleague David Cohn, former Contributing Editor at NewsTrust. The Spot.Us site just launched this week, and focuses initially on San Francisco Bay Area news, thanks to a grant from the Knight Foundation. Kudos from all of us at NewsTrust for launching this innovative way to support local journalism!
Nice write-up!
Posted by: Mike LaBonte | November 16, 2008 at 07:59 PM