The view here for some years has been that newspaper endorsements tend not to be very decisive in most political races, with the possible and periodic exception of down-ballot races where few people know the candidates. Seattle’s Crosscut site adds a new twist this: When two competing news sites endorse, which carries more weight? The question here concerns the city’s newspaper behemoth, the Times, and the scrappy indie weekly, the Stranger. “The Stranger has positioned itself on the left, appealing to the young urbanists who live on Capitol Hill and Ballard and never missing an opportunity to insult the Seattle Times. The Times, meanwhile, continues to hold its ground as the voice of moderates — “socially liberal and fiscally conservative,†according to the editor of the Seattle Times editorial page Kate Riley. From the outside, it looks like something of an arms race between the two — with the papers both buying advertising space for elections-related Google searches.” There’s an argument that, when factoring in online analytics, the Stranger‘s endorsement, which is apt to be more emphatically stated and aimed at the gut, may actually be the more significant of the two. Read and see. – rs (photo/Jon S)
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