How can newspapers endorse candidates

In election season, candidates become a fixture of the news, so the editorial board takes aim. The vast majority of editorial board endorsements go to local candidates for city council, county judge, state senate, district attorney, sheriff, mayor and other such posts. Those races and the copious candidates can be hard for the public to keep track of, but the editorial board spends each day immersed in local news, and it conducts interviews with the candidates.

So its endorsements can provide valuable insight to voters who haven't sifted through all the facts on their own. Endorsements of presidential candidates may seem less imperative, since voters particularly this year find themselves intimately inundated with months of election updates. It seems hard to believe anyone would need help forming an opinion.

Endorsements of local candidates by the paper and by other community organizations — realtors, PBA, teachers, political parties, etc. In local races, the newspaper should endorse at least 45 days before the election.

Absentee ballots are mailed to voters 45 days before the election. Early voting starts 10 days before the election. A third of the eligible voters have already cast their ballot by the time election day arrives. Candidates, if they get a good endorsement, are likely to use them in campaign ads. The newspaper — and other community organizations — serve as a credible third-party validator.

This cannot be done if endorsements occur within a week of an election. Another issue? And that could lead them to believe that the entire paper favors a particular candidate.

So, what about all this? I reached out to three journalists who play key roles in endorsements to get their thoughts on the topic: Scott Gillespie, editorial page editor and vice president at The Star Tribune in Minneapolis; Bina Venkataraman, the editorial page editor of The Boston Globe; and Mike Lafferty, the opinions editor at the Orlando Sentinel.

If a newspaper chooses to have an editorial voice representing the institution, it should take its leadership role seriously. We publish more than editorials from our Editorial Board.

It would be an abdication of that leadership role to sit out elections. We also want to be widely read and be relevant, and our endorsements generate readership and spark healthy debate — on our website and no doubt at kitchen and dining room tables. Particularly for down-ballot non-presidential, local races and for ballot questions, we take the time to learn about the candidates and questions, to interview candidates and proponents, and to deliberate on the tradeoffs.

For some readers and voters that carries some weight. It seems natural that we would also express institutional opinions about the people who are running to make those laws and create those policies. At the Sentinel we view our endorsements as just another piece of the puzzle for voters to make up their minds. We hope our endorsements generate more interest in elections and more voting, whether or not readers agree with our picks.

We also run counterpoints from candidates or their supporters who compete for but do not receive our endorsement. But we try to weigh strong counterarguments to our positions and to be transparent about the evidence and reasoning behind our choices, so that readers can disagree with us but at least see what led to our conclusions. We strive to be a non-ideological editorial board; we pride ourselves on weighing the evidence about what policies and ideas and people can create the best outcomes for society.

That said, we do uphold values such as fairness, equality, freedom of expression that underpin our decisions. With our opinion pages, the goal is not to have people universally agree with us, but to provoke learning, debate, and, ideally, progress. Sometimes that means being persuasive to people with open minds; sometimes it means making sure a critical consideration about a candidate or policy gets aired and weighed in public.

We hope that readers will see that our endorsements are made in good faith and are the product of reporting. Do you believe readers recognize the difference between the editorial page and the news department at newspapers? Newspaper endorsements are specific declarations or statements of support for a political candidate. This candidate could be seeking the presidency or any number of local political offices. American newspapers have been endorsing U. The New York Times , for example, has been endorsing presidential candidates since Endorsements appear in the editorial section , which gives opinions.

The editorial section is separate from the news section. Newspapers come to their endorsement decisions in different ways, notes Danny Funt in the Columbia Journalism Review. For an endorsement, Funt explains, five board members must reach a consensus decision.

In other words, its editorial team met with candidates and asked them questions. The questions and answers were not released to the public. This year will be the first time that The New York Times publishes written transcripts and videos of the interviews.