Media critic finds clunkers and at least one golden nugget in local coverage of presidential candidates

When the presidential candidates come to town, some local reporters and editors "fawn over McCain and Obama. But their coverage also is less cynical than their national counterparts' and focuses on issues closer to home," says the subhead on James Rainey's "On The Media" column today in the Los Angeles Times.

Rainey starts with an insult, reporting that "campaign pros once called" the tactic of offering "small newspapers and TV stations" a chance for exclusive but brief interviews "dialing for dummies," the expectation being that the reporters weren't smart enough to ask the candidates questions that would do any damage. But Rainey reports that his examination of recent local reports on such encounters produced "a fabulously mixed bag." Not all dealt with interviews.

Rainey says the weekly the Black Hills Pioneer offered "an uncritical account of McCain’s appearance at the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally" in South Dakota. We note that reporter Tom Lawrence wrote, "McCain joked that he noticed there was a beauty contest at the campground and he asked his wife if she would enter." Some national journalists and bloggers noted that the winner is often topless or even bottomless, based on this report from Jim Caple of ESPN; Lawrence didn't note that, but did write that national reporters traveling with McCain "were agape as they snapped photos of girls dancing on stripper poles, muscular bikers strolling around and the general air of freewheeling frivolity at the campground."

After citing examples of easygoing local coverage, Rainey shows that local reporters can be tough, by citing the work of Chad Livengood, right, Missouri statehouse reporter for The Springfield News-Leader. Livengood's story began, "On stage, Sen. John McCain pitched a summer-long suspension of the 18.5-cent federal gas tax as a way to give Missourians immediate cost relief at the gas pump. But behind closed doors, the Republican presidential nominee acknowledged it's 'very doubtful' his campaign promise will ever be fulfilled -- much less debated in Congress. 'It would be hard to do, obviously,' McCain told the News-Leader in a one-on-one interview." (Read more) "And his story described how some economists doubted the tax cut would make a significant difference," Rainey reports. "Sometimes campaigns dial for dummies and end up reaching sharpies."