A Matter of Interpretation

"Ha Ha, your medium is dying," says Nelson on "The Simpsons," pointing to a character who is called a Washington Post reporter.

Then, in the same episode, aired Jan. 6, Principal Skinner says: "What about the media? They are not covering the issues. They just want to declare a front-runner and return to their mansions."

"The Simpsons" is appointment television in my household. The writers have characters poke fun at everything they can think of, my profession included, to hilarious effect. One character from several years ago: Will F. George.

But the barb about campaign coverage carries plenty of truth. The so-called Mainstream Media -- and let's not forget, a large part of the MSM is TV and cable channels that employ more talkers than reporters -- always look for the horse race, and are justifiably criticized for it year after year. The fact is, the horse race is easy for television -- a quick graphic of who's ahead and who's trailing. Not only that, local TV is famous for "here he comes, there he goes" coverage when a candidate passes through town.

But did obsessing over the horse race and the polls cause the MSM to miss the New Hampshire rebound for Hillary Clinton? I don't think so.

It's easy to point fingers, much harder to get the facts, which always require first-hand reporting. And what were reporters seeing and hearing in the days leading up to the New Hampshire primary? Large, enthusiastic crowds for Obama; smaller ones for Clinton; Clinton campaign workers talking about moving to other candidates. The Clinton campaign's decision to move her primary-night speech to a smaller gymnasium to avoid the image of empty seats. And, we later learned, she had prepared a concession speech for Tuesday night because her aides were so certain of defeat.

E.J. Dionne and Michael Gerson were among a phalanx of Writers Group columnists on the ground in New Hampshire. Both produced, on the fly, fine columns dealing with the sudden turn of events. Dionne, and fellow-Writers Groupers David S. Broder, George F. Will, Kathleen Parker, Ellen Goodman, Marie Cocco and Richard Cohen produced day-after columns that explained in detail the rapid resurgence of the Clinton campaign.

Still, many newspaper and broadcast headlines on Tuesday looked pretty silly by Wednesday.

What happened? National reporters and columnists got the facts right, but could not detect the shift in the New Hampshire electorate. It's easy to say that they should have been more cautious, in light of the famous unpredictability of New Hampshire voters. As pollster Peter Hart wrote in an online comment to The Washington Post, "the motto of the state should be: 'where big mo comes to die.'"

But the biggest factor may have been the short amount of time between the Iowa caucuses on Thursday night and the New Hampshire primary on the following Tuesday. It had two key effects: There wasn't enough time for a Clinton surge to show up in the polls; and many New Hampshire voters, also squeezed by the time frame, didn't decide on their candidates until the last days or even hours before the vote.

As to exit polling that on primary day showed Clinton trailing by double digits, those pollsters have something to answer for.

Alan Shearer is editorial director of The Washington Post Writers Group.

Didja Hear the News About Raleigh?

Didja hear the news about Raleigh? The News & Observer made Romenesko yesterday in a story about expanding its comics pages. Not only did the editors get tremendous POSITIVE feedback from readers, but the experience caused a opinion shift in the newsroom about the importance of comics to the quality of a newspaper.

Here's the quick n' dirty: Features Editor Thad Ogburn began trialing guest comics as part of his plan to add a couple of new comic strips to replace those that had gone out of syndication. At first, the guest comic strips were only to run it for a few months, which was then extended to a year, and as they trialed more strips they realized readership was really catching on. The N&O started a comics blog that allowed readers to chime in on their faves and foes and when they allowed for a full comics survey, they got an overwhelming response -- almost 8,000 readers. As Deputy Managing Editor Dan Barkin commented, "It would be lunacy for a newspaper to ignore that."

As reported in the story above, editors were so awed by the response -- again, overwhelmingly "rapturous" -- that they scrapped the original plan to add three new strips and cut three old ones, and instead cleared space for nine more strips, bringing back comics that had been canceled and tossing several newcomers into the mix.

And the paper isn't stopping there. As Thad explained on his blog to a reader who asked about why the paper continues to trial strips, "(T)here are new strips being introduced all the time. You never know when one might be the next "Far Side," Calvin & Hobbes" or "Bloom County." Then again, sometimes a strip can look really good at first, but it doesn't live up to its promise over time. The guest comic program gives us a chance to take a strip for a test drive for four weeks and see how readers respond."

The key lesson here is that the editors in Raleigh got past believing that comics take away space from the "great issues of the day." A well-balanced comics page deals with the "great issues" better than any other page of the paper. That's right, even better than the front page, which is almost all breaking news, and the opinion page, which has a limit of subjects it can cover each day. The comics page reaches readers on a different level and touches them more deeply than all the stories in the paper that day -- all while delivering the message in an entertaining way.

So before you dismiss changing your comics as too frivolous, too time-consuming, or too hard for readers to accept, think about what was accomplished in Raleigh by an editor who took his page seriously and gave it the attention it deserved. You've got all the resources you need to start your own Guest Comic Rotation by clicking here.

"Change" isn't just a buzzword in the political realm. Do something that will get YOUR newspaper a highlight on Romenesko. And while we're at it ... Thad Ogburn for President!!

Karisue Wyson is the manager of marketing, licensing and sales at The Washington Post Writers Group.