JOURNALISTS AND UNINFORMED VOTERS.

JOURNALISTS AND UNINFORMED VOTERS. Voters who pay attention only for short periods of time—for example, during conventions—are ill served by journalists who feel that only “news” should be reported. By the time the conventions take place, the positions of the wining candidate have been thoroughly reported, and so they are not “news.” Dan Rather even questioned whether the television networks should cover the conventions at all because there was no “news” there (only the party’s presentation of an appeal to voters). Yet information that has been known for months and is boring for reporters and the politically passionate is essential for those voters who Kathryn Hall Jamieson tells us are watching the conventions in order to decide how to vote.