When to call it?

The way that polls of the presidential election are looking the news media may face an interesting decision next Tuesday. Several battleground states lie on the east coast, for example Florida and Virginia. If Senator Obama wins either of these states he has effectively won; just winning one of these combined with states in which he has lead of over ten percentage points would put him over 270 electoral votes. Virginia's voting closes at 7:00 p.m. eastern time, a long time before the polls close on the west coast or in competitive states such as Nevada or Colorado. With exit polling the national news agencies could have a very good idea of who is winning the state well before the polls close.

So when will they call it? Certainly journalists remember the 2000 race in which some stations mistakenly called the election for Al Gore due to flawed exit polls in Florida, so journalists will likely only call a state if it is far from close. Beyond this though, journalists might consider the ramifications of calling the election before all voting is closed. If the media declares that Obama has effectively won the election before many citizens have voted, there is little doubt that many of these people will decide not to vote at all. After all, why bother if the election is already determined? While this could cause both Obama as well as McCain supporters to abstain from voting, I imagine it may effect a larger number of McCain supporters. This could have a tremendous effect on races downticket. Senate races in Oregon and Texas are very close and could easily be effected by less voters from one party or another showing up to vote. I am sure that we can all agree that having less people show up to vote, and this possibly changing other races, would be a bad thing. Understanding this, journalists may have to make a difficult decision come election day.

Interview

Lisa Larson from the The Spectrum in St. George gave me her answers to questions about journalism. Although Lisa is a newspaper reporter, she did not study journalism in college. Lisa studied public relations and advertising at SUU. Unable to find a pr job after graduating in 2001 she applied for an assistant features editor position for the Spectrum and discovered after a short time that she really enjoyed it. Lisa's view of what makes good journalism is fairly simple: 'information that can help people'. She also emphasized that good journalism also requires that you treat your sources well and fairly.

In terms of public journalism, Lisa feels that it can be very valuable to also hear the opinions and points of view of everyday people who aren't professional journalists. But she cautioned that because they do not play by the same rules, citizen journalists may not act with the caution, i.e. fact checking. Along with this, Lisa suggested that those currently studying journalism should be well versed in the online facets of the news industry. She said, "Be prepared to write for online first, print second when you get into the field."

The fact that a newspaper is a business, according to Lisa, is something that she, and most starting journalists, don't fully realize. During her years working in the news Lisa has learned that there is often not a great divide between the newsroom and the advertising executives, and that sometimes stories are changed or softened because it may alienate a certain advertiser. Although newspapers nationwide have felt the sting of drops in circulation, Lisa says that her newspaper is lucky that they have been able, so far, to cut costs and not jobs.

Electoral Map

It seems like every few days the various news organizations have a news nationwide poll to show how the presidential race is going, but do these polls really give important information. The presidency is decided state by state, not by the popular vote. Recently I've found a website I find very interesting that aggregates all of the statewide polls and shows what it would mean for the election. The website is http://www.electoral-vote.com/ The site cites all of of the polls it uses and if you click on any state it will give you a graph that shows all of the polls of that state for the last few months. I thought you guys might like this site.