Don't Ignore the Moderates

Writing well takes energy. Writing well about moderates employs craft. Writing well about moderates while delivering ratings & circulation mandates traits competing for the top requirement: talent and tenure. (Building a non-clickbait audience is a slow burn.)

Conversely? Restricting coverage to flanking shiny objects can juice the careers of ambitious journalists (and editors) (and publishers) spanning quality spectrum.

A reader caught the New York Times doing something right:

To the Editor:

Re “The Moderates Take a Grilling Back at Home” (front page, Feb. 25):

Well, saints be praised! The New York Times ran an article about moderate Democrats!

You’d think by your coverage that we had all vanished from the earth. Please start giving fair time to the middle-leaning voices in our party. Too many articles about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the progressives. Not all of us lean that far left. Start talking about what the moderates are doing and where they stand on issues. Your coverage matters in this next presidential election. Don’t blow it.

Cara Schirrmeister
New York

Also! Creating space for reporters who cover moderates well -- and TV reporters who cover anything well are, fundamentally, excellent writers -- requires (gasp!) effort from news consumers. Which we'll address in future posts.


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Further Reading:

Caitlin Flanagan opens an angle on a moderate 85-year-old senator this way: "On Friday morning in San Francisco, the Sunrise Movement faced off against the Sunset Movement—and the Sunset Movement won. It won big."   theatlantic.com




This work by AJ Fish is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.