Gilbert Cranberg: HOW TO DEMYSTIFY ENDORSEMENTS

Count the Des Moines Register, my former paper, among the losers in the recent election. The paper endorsed Mitt Romney. The Register, as is usual in the endorsing business, explained that its purpose was to contribute to conversation about the election. The conversation the paper triggered could not have been what it had in mind. The back and forth in a lot of Iowa households apparently went something like this: “Hon, how much do we pay for the Register and why do we need it?” The paper’s circulation director told me he estimated that the Romney endorsement cost the Register 140-150 subscribers.

The paper lost prestige as well as customers. Its October 27 editorial boiled down the election into a single issue-- the economy, claiming Romney’s business acumen would help unlock the nation’s economic potential. Paul Krugman, the Nobel laureate in economics, devoted a portion of his regular New York Times column to the Register’s editorial, dismissing it as “remarkable in a bad way.” A longtime former editorial writer and sometime contributor to the Register told me he was reconsidering whether he wanted to continue to have his name associated with the paper.

A former Register publisher, Charles C. Edwards Jr., a member of the founding Cowles family, wrote in a letter to the editor that the endorsement “surprised and saddened” him.  The paper declined to publish similar letters from critical former staffers.

In backing Romney, the Register indulged in highly suspect reasoning. As David Stockman, Ronald Reagan’s budget director, pointed out recently, Romney’s private business experience is irrelevant to the nation’s economic problems because he was “a master financial speculator who bought, sold, flipped and stripped businesses….having a trader’s facility for knowing when to hold ’em and when to fold ‘em has virtually nothing to do with rectifying the massive fiscal hemorrhage and debt-burdened private economy that are the real issues before the American electorate.”

I asked the Register’s publisher, Laura Hollingsworth, if the Romney endorsement was her call. She did not answer directly. Instead she sent me the following e-mail:

“Being a longtime journalist I know you know that no news organization, especially the Register, shares which board member supported specific issues, candidates or views. Our editorials -- not just the endorsement editorial from Oct. 28 (sic) but 364 others we write annually – are unsigned. That’s because while not every member of our five-person board may agree with every choice or decision we make, our endorsements reflect the thoughts and decisions from everyone at the table. That is why they are not signed by individual writers. Just like all of my predecessors, I have always insisted on a collaborative process that includes debates, thoughtful agreement and disagreement, and concessions between us all and that is what occurred in this process. We were thoughtful. We were deliberate. We took seriously our responsibility in making this endorsement. But we did so without regard to party, polling or the political winds blowing across the nation or Iowa or Des Moines. At the heart of every opinion we share and editorial we craft is the goal to advance the conversation in our community.  We’ve said repeatedly that our board focused on a very specific issue related to our endorsement: Reinvigorating the nation’s long-stalled economy. It wasn’t a surprise to us that voters said the same thing –restoring our economic vigor -- when they talked to exit pollsters. We felt Gov. Romney was best suited to accomplish that. The voters disagreed and offered support to President Obama. As our editor said in his column Sunday, “To the extent that our endorsement has made people think a bit more critically about the election and spawned reaction that has sharpened the debate, the endorsement performed the purpose of a newspaper editorial.”

Geneva Overholser, a former Register editor, told me she understood that the vote of the editorial board was 4-1 to support Obama. She emphasized that she did not have first-hand knowledge about how the board divided. My efforts to verify the vote drew a blank.

News organizations love to tout their support for openness. The public’s right to know is a favorite cliché. But try to find out what went into an editorial endorsement and you run into speculation, gossip and rumor.

It’s time to de-mystify endorsements. Here’s how: simply plunk down a tape recorder when the editorial board convenes, transcribe the discussion and print it in the paper. I did that once on a contentious abortion issue and even critics of our abortion position loved it.