From the Publisher: An endorsement for not endorsing

A certain daily newspaper based on the other side of the Potomac River was in the news last week for all the wrong reasons.

At the behest of its owner, Jeff Bezos, the Washington Post announced it will stop endorsing candidates for President – and apparently much to the chagrin of its staff specifically will not endorse a candidate in this year’s presidential election.

This was an awful decision – but only because of the timing. Indeed, the Post had already endorsed many candidates on the ballot this November, including in our own 7th District congressional race.

Had the newspaper announced months ago that it was not going to endorse a presidential candidate, it would have been newsworthy but would not have dominated the news cycle. Deciding not to endorse less than two weeks before the election only invited speculation as to the rationale and made the story bigger than it should have been.

(Indeed, Bezos acknowledged as such in an op/ed published Tuesday explaining his decision. “I wish we had made the change earlier than we did, in a moment further from the election and the emotions around it,” he wrote. “That was inadequate planning, and not some intentional strategy.”)

But the simple fact is that news organizations should no longer be in the business of endorsing political candidates. Here at InsideNoVa, we came to that realization several years ago, and many other news organizations have reached the same conclusion in the past decade.

The reasons for not endorsing candidates are multifaceted and actually have nothing to do with the reduced circulation of newspapers. With websites, news organizations like InsideNoVa reach more people than ever before – just not all of them are reading in print.

The primary reason for ending endorsements is that such decisions are typically made by one person – the owner of the news outlet – or by a very small group of people, commonly called an “editorial board.”

A well-constructed editorial board should reflect a diversity of viewpoints, but endorsements are a zero-sum game. There’s a winner and a loser. Besides, who cares which candidate the owner of a newspaper or even a small editorial board thinks should win?

Having been involved in a leadership role at InsideNoVa since 2007 (with a gap of about 18 months), and now as a part-owner, I personally played a key role in many of our endorsements before we ended the practice. Some were made despite my objections, and some were made because of my personal views. Some I am proud of and believe were justified, and others were, in retrospect, simply bad decisions.

But, really, who cares? This newspaper reaches 40,000 or so readers every week, and our website reaches hundreds of thousands of people across Northern Virginia every month. I doubt a single one of those people referred to our endorsement when deciding how to vote.

More importantly, one of the major problems affecting the media today is the lack of trust from the public who believe we are “biased” one way or the other. Endorsing political candidates only fuels that perception.

In fact, the fallout from the decision at the Post exposed the political leanings of the news staff, upset specifically that the newspaper was not endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris. One wonders what the staff’s reaction would have been had the proposed endorsement been for former President Donald Trump.

At a legitimate news organization, the opinion – or editorial – page should be outside the domain of the news staff. The news staff’s role is to gather the facts and report the news, and a separate group of people should provide analysis and commentary on those facts on the opinion pages.

Here at InsideNoVa, we can’t afford big teams, but as publisher I oversee the content on this page, decide what columns and letters we publish, and ultimately am responsible for our editorials (although astute readers will note that we have generally moved away from publishing unsigned editorials in favor of columns like this). Our editors and reporters are not involved in those decisions.

If you have a complaint or a differing viewpoint, you know where to find me, and if you can put it in writing there’s a good chance it will be in next week’s paper.

So, while I urge you to vote next week (if you haven’t already voted), we’re not going to tell you who to vote for. I think you’re smart enough to do your own research and figure that out for yourself.

Bruce Potter is publisher of InsideNoVa, part of Rappahannock Media LLC, of which he is a co-owner. He can be reached at bpotter@insidenova.com.