NY-23: A newspaper editor sees 'Huns at the gates'

by: devtob

Fri Nov 20, 2009 at 10:47:24 AM EST

Congressman Bill Owens has gotten two excellent committees, given that his district includes Fort Drum and 100 miles or so of border with Canada -- Armed Services and Homeland Security.

But here's what's more interesting than all that, to me anyway -- a column by Bob Gorman, managing editor of Watertown Daily Times.

The column is more about media than politics, but it's fascinating in several ways.

Really.

Details, below.

It made some news outside the district during the special election, when Hoffman screwed up his meeting with its editorial board.

Here's the lede of the WDT story about that:

Douglas L. Hoffman, the Conservative Party candidate for the 23rd Congressional District, showed no grasp of the bread-and-butter issues pertinent to district residents in a Thursday morning meeting with the Watertown Daily Times editorial board.

Gorman's post-election column last Friday, headlined "Even more hostage notes from the 23rd Congressional District race", deals with three media issues.

First of all, the New York Times made a mistake when it wrote that Democrats "pressed" for the WDT endorsement after Scozzafava dropped out in the last week.

Nice story, except the "pressed for the endorsement" never happened. Our paper changed its endorsement from Scozzafava to Owens without hearing from anybody.

After a few emails from us, The New York Times printed a correction this week, which we appreciated. We would have been even more appreciative if the correction didn't refer to us as the Watertown Daily News.

So, even the correction needs a correction, at the country's most prominent newspaper.

Another part of the column notes that "our whatchamacallit newspaper" is the smallest newspaper in the country to maintain a Washington bureau.

Sure, it's because Fort Drum is near Watertown, and is the largest employer in the district (not including troops of the storied 10th Mountain Division).

But it is still a remarkable commitment of journalistic resources for such a small paper.

Finally, Gorman responds to Hoffman supporters who had complained that the paper was "on the take" from candidates other than Hoffman.

He writes that, among the many millions spent on the NY-23 race, the WDT got:

Zero. Nada. Goose egg. Our newspaper didn't receive one political ad from Scozzafava, Owens or Conservative Doug Hoffman. (OK, we did get an ad from Scozzafava thanking supporters AFTER she dropped out of the race).

Gorman's not on the business side of the paper, but he's somewhat upset about that.

For good reasons.

Did they not know we were here?

Oh, they knew. If you looked at all the campaign advertising on television or in the mail, the Watertown Daily Times was splashed all over the place. Our stories and headlines were being used by all three campaigns to tout their candidate's qualities and tarnish their opponents' flaws.

So there you have it. Politicians believe newspapers and their Web sites have the most information you can trust. But in their perfect world, newspapers eventually won't have enough money to exist.

Thus, in any postmortem of the 23rd Congressional District race, it should be noted that this wasn't just a fight about social issues, local issues and the soul of the Republican Party. It was also a fight against our decaying brand of journalism that is atrophying into little more than candidate press releases, ethically bankrupt push polls and cable TV echo chambers masquerading as news shows.

We're trying to tell you: The Huns are at the gates.

Gorman presumably intended his "Huns at the gates" metaphor to refer to the decay and atrophy of journalism.

But the metaphor, for me anyway, applies also to the excitable teabagger micro-minority who badgered Gorman daily about the WDT's coverage of the NY-23 race, and some teabaggers' implicit, so far, advocacy of violent revolution against the elected government of the United States.