Big papers abandon presidential campaign trail

Smaller newspapers and broadcast stations are bearing more of the responsibility of covering presidential candidates because major media are finding the cost of traveling with them, up to $2,000 a day, "too steep in an era in which newspapers in particular are slashing costs and paring staff, and with no end in sight to a primary campaign that began more than a year ago," writes Jacques Steinberg of The New York Times.

"Among the newspapers that have chosen not to dispatch reporters to cover the two leading Democratic candidates on a regular basis are USA Today, the nation’s largest paper, as well as The Boston Globe, the Dallas Morning News, the Houston Chronicle, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Baltimore Sun, the Miami Herald and The Philadelphia Inquirer (at least until the Pennsylvania primary, on April 22, began to loom large)."

The value of traveling with a candidate is that you are able to "track the evolution and growth (or lack thereof) of candidates; spot pandering and inconsistencies or dishonesty; and get a measure of the candidate that could be useful should he or she become president," Steinberg notes. He acknowledges that good work is being done off the campaign trail, but "Readers are being exposed to fewer perspectives drawn from shoe-leather reporting." (Read more)