Regarding our recent unpleasantness, also known as the race for the 23rd Congressional District, here's a note from a former staffer:
I covered the race in the 23rd for my current employer TIME and I linked to your work obsessively and read everything you guys wrote about the candidates and the race. Anyone wondering about the value of local newspapers need look no further than the WDT's coverage of the 23rd — the blogging, the photos, the breaking news coverage, the regular stories (like about Hoffman's hospital earmark) and the election-night rolling coverage on the home page. Local journalism is the foundation for so much of what we do in the national media and so I just wanted to say one thing really. Thanks for working so damn hard.
Best,
Kate Pickert
As the national media continues to dissect the race for New York's 23rd Congressional District, the role of the Watertown Daily Times is always part of the discussion.
In just five days (the three days prior to the election and the two days after) our Web site had more than 638,000 page views for one reason. Our newspaper and Web site had the most information about the race. And we set the tone for the race by continually putting issues before the candidates and our readers.
In the last three weeks we fielded several calls from political TV and radio programs, magazines and Web sites with regard to our coverage. Much of it revolved around an editorial we published the day after Conservative candidate Doug Hoffman visited the Times for an editorial board meeting. And it intensified the weekend before the election as we broke the news about Republican Dede Scozzafava dropping out of the race, and then the next day throwing her support to Democrat Bill Owens.
For instance, more than 25,000 visitors came to WatertownDailyTimes.com through the Web site Realclearpolitics.com.
The other major providers of site traffic to the Times were:
- Hotair.com, 17,532
- DailyKos.com, 9,483
- New York Times, 7,010
- pajamasmedia.com, 6,082
- michellemalkin.com, 5,375
- freerepublic.com, 3,477
- nydailynews.com, 2,789
- politicalwire.com, 2,615
- nationalreview.com, 2,418
- fivethirtyeight.com, 2,272
- politico.com, 1,189
- timesunion.com, 1,109
- usatoday.com, 924
- time.com, 884
- cnn.com, 830
- newsbusters.org, 815
- washingtonpost.com, 733
- huffingtonpost.com, 683
The reason the Times was being linked to by so many media sources is that our newspaper framed the issues for the candidates. While the Hoffman camp wanted the race to be about a national agenda, we kept asking him — and the other candidates — what their positions were on local issues.
And those questions have become today's template in describing what went so wrong for Hoffman when polls showed that everything was going so right.
(Here's a recent take by the Providence Journal's Froma Harrop, the only journalist I am aware of who can give the name of Dede Scozzafava a run for its money:
http://www.creators.com/opinion/froma-harrop/the-tea-baggers-were-carpetbaggers.html
The local vs. national debate will continue as some nuance-challenged bloggers have suggested incorrectly that we were asking Hoffman, say, how much road salt north country counties should buy.
But our readers understand the drill. This paper always attempts to explain how our community is affected by decisions made in Washington, D.C. Who was the best candidate to replace now Army Secretary John McHugh? Well, the best way to figure that out is to explain the way in which McHugh looked at issues and compare that with what candidates were saying.
Our Washington Correspondent Marc Heller spent a month doing just that, providing stories on subjects such as earmarks, union endorsements and milk subsidies.
Heller's reporting on those topics was nothing new; he's been writing about them for years. But with Owens and Hoffman hiding behind 30-second TV commercials and avoiding hour-long televised debates with Scozzafava, Heller's stories were actually providing all the debating voters were going to get.
(Yes, a Syracuse TV station held a last-minute debate with the three candidates. But all the issues discussed came from the pages of the Times.)
While Heller was filling our front page with important issue stories, Jude Seymour's "All Politics Is Local" blog on our Web site (more than 22,000 hits in October and the first week of November) became must reading for true political junkies. Jude was also breaking news stories in addition to giving the best roundup in the north country of what was being reported in our paper and by other journalists.
Meanwhile, he was often out of the office filming the candidates and putting clips on his blog and on our multimedia page.
In other words, if you didn't know the candidates and what they stood for, it was your fault.
The rest of our staff also did an outstanding job election night to cover our local races — you know, the ones involving the people who actually do decide how much road salt needs to be purchased.
With the next congressional election less than a year away, the jockeying is already beginning for the Republicans. I can assure you that Marc and Jude will continue to be your best resources in helping you decide who should be our congressman — or woman — in 2010.
And I can also assure you of this: If Doug Hoffman decides to run again, we will politely remind our readers that even Abbie Hoffman was willing to move into the 23rd Congressional District.
Wait a second ... the feds wanted Abbie. Was that a local or national issue?
Bob Gorman is managing editor of the Times.
