Come along for a brief tour of my e-mail's inbox:
€ At 1:34 p.m. Thursday, the Dan Maffei campaign sends an advisory about a discussion he's having with Sen. Joseph Biden.
€ At 1:38 p.m., a news release from the Zogby polling firm has results on the battle for the U.S. Senate.
€ At 1:42 p.m., we hear from Jeanine Pirro, who has picked up the HVB&CTC” endorsement (don't ask me what that stands for).
€ At 1:43 p.m., Friends of John Faso tell us where he's planning to be the next day.
€ At 1:44 p.m., Maffei sends a correction to his earlier e-mail.
€ At 2:16 p.m., Maffei tells us about a campaign appearance with Eliot Spitzer.
€ At 2:29 p.m., Andrew Cuomo announces he has the White Plains PBA endorsement.
That was one hour of one day last week. Multiply that by seven (for the number of days we received this volume of announcements) and then by say, 12 (for the number of hours each day this stuff is coming in).
Welcome to life in the newsroom in the week prior to the election. For news media, the biggest challenge of the days leading up to the election is how to handle the onslaught from all of the campaigns.
All of the candidates do this, and inevitably, we upset all of the candidates at some point because we simply don't have the time or the space to get all of these items into the paper. More importantly, we realize that most readers aren't interested in much of what these campaigns are sending our way.
The challenge is to go through all of these media advisories and press releases to be sure we don't miss something that's important. Is there some piece of information that's new? Is it something readers will care about? Is it fair to put this information into the newspaper?
We've done our best over the past month to present issues-based information on the races, and hopefully readers will feel informed enough to make wise decisions when they step into the voting booth on Tuesday.
We've done it through a series of straight-forward election previews, in which we profiled the candidates and asked them about key issues affecting their races. We covered the local debates that took place over the last few weeks, and published stories that hopefully illustrated some of the differences that emerged from those discussions. And when news has broken on the campaign trail, we've done our best to report on it.
I'm sure there is room for improvement, and we welcome your thoughts on what you'd like from the newspaper regarding campaign coverage in the future.
Just hold off on sending those suggestions via e-mail for a few more days.
Executive editor Jeremy Boyer's column runs Saturdays in the Citizen and he can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 231 or jeremy.boyer@lee.net
€ At 1:38 p.m., a news release from the Zogby polling firm has results on the battle for the U.S. Senate.
€ At 1:42 p.m., we hear from Jeanine Pirro, who has picked up the HVB&CTC” endorsement (don't ask me what that stands for).
€ At 1:43 p.m., Friends of John Faso tell us where he's planning to be the next day.
€ At 1:44 p.m., Maffei sends a correction to his earlier e-mail.
€ At 2:16 p.m., Maffei tells us about a campaign appearance with Eliot Spitzer.
€ At 2:29 p.m., Andrew Cuomo announces he has the White Plains PBA endorsement.
That was one hour of one day last week. Multiply that by seven (for the number of days we received this volume of announcements) and then by say, 12 (for the number of hours each day this stuff is coming in).
Welcome to life in the newsroom in the week prior to the election. For news media, the biggest challenge of the days leading up to the election is how to handle the onslaught from all of the campaigns.
All of the candidates do this, and inevitably, we upset all of the candidates at some point because we simply don't have the time or the space to get all of these items into the paper. More importantly, we realize that most readers aren't interested in much of what these campaigns are sending our way.
The challenge is to go through all of these media advisories and press releases to be sure we don't miss something that's important. Is there some piece of information that's new? Is it something readers will care about? Is it fair to put this information into the newspaper?
We've done our best over the past month to present issues-based information on the races, and hopefully readers will feel informed enough to make wise decisions when they step into the voting booth on Tuesday.
We've done it through a series of straight-forward election previews, in which we profiled the candidates and asked them about key issues affecting their races. We covered the local debates that took place over the last few weeks, and published stories that hopefully illustrated some of the differences that emerged from those discussions. And when news has broken on the campaign trail, we've done our best to report on it.
I'm sure there is room for improvement, and we welcome your thoughts on what you'd like from the newspaper regarding campaign coverage in the future.
Just hold off on sending those suggestions via e-mail for a few more days.
Executive editor Jeremy Boyer's column runs Saturdays in the Citizen and he can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 231 or jeremy.boyer@lee.net
