The Denver Post
sheepishly explains its endorsement of Bush:
Editor's note: More than 700 readers have given us their thoughts on Sunday's presidential endorsement, and they add up to a passionate dissent. An endorsement is meant to provide the newspaper's perspective and to stimulate readers' consideration of issues and candidates. Most readers look over the paper's analysis and then draw their own conclusions, as today's letters certainly demonstrate. Every letter we received was critical of the Post endorsement; we publish a sampling here today.
The Post editorial policy is established by its editorial board and is entirely independent of the paper's news coverage. In the case of Sunday's Bush endorsement, the editorial board, like the country, was divided, and we took extraordinary steps to ensure that the full range of views was represented in our pages. On the adjacent page, we ran a column by two of our editorial writers, "Kerry's appeal - 'America can do better."' We hope our readers will take a look at that piece as well as the endorsement itself. Together, these pieces reflect the sharp division of opinion in Colorado as Election Day nears.
Back in Cleveland, intense public scrutiny probably had a role in fighting off the Plain Dealer's publisher from imposing a Bush endorsement on the paper's pro-Kerry editorial board.
I was interested to see that most papers still endorsed candidates this time around. I suspect that with an increasingly organized and polarized partisan community, the newspaper endorsement may be on its final legs. Is it worth it to any paper to endure hundreds or thousands of angry letters, newspaper cancellations, protests, and other negative publicity in order to endorse a candidate? And really, it's not as if newspaper presidential endorsements carry much weight these days anyway with the proliferation of alternative media.
If I had to guess, the presidential endorsement is on its last legs. If I was a newspaper publisher, I'd run two editorials -- one making the case for each candidate. And it's perhaps as it should be -- if people really need help making up their minds, let them read two arguments so they can make the decision themselves.
Down-ballot races are a different story. I depend on my local alternative weekly to make sense of the myriad local candidates and ballot initiatives. But as for the president of the United States? Most of us can make that decision on our own, thank you very much.