Ron Paul Supporters, We Were Wrong
Sean Breslin | February 7, 2008
Montana Kaimin
Last night, Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul won more delegates than any other candidate at the Missoula County Republican Caucus. Despite the now obviously high levels of support, the Montana Kaimin did not run a single article on Paul, nor did we include him in our election prediction scorecard.
To Paul supporters in Missoula, and specifically at the University of Montana, the Montana Kaimin regrets this omission.
In excluding Paul, we stifled both his message and supporters. Cutting people out of the political process is anything but democratic, as several readers have correctly pointed out.
For some national media outlets, not including Paul might have made sense. In covering political attitudes across the entire country, honing in on a low-population state that supports a non-mainstream candidate might require more resources than they are willing or able to commit. Covering candidates with more broad support makes sense at that level.
But in the weeks leading up to Montana’s caucus, local media either did not see or outright ignored Paul’s local support. The Montana Kaimin is especially guilty of this lapse because much of Paul’s support comes from college students.
Though the Kaimin may take cues from the national media (they are professionals, after all), we shouldn’t forget that they serve a very different audience than we do. Our primary area of coverage is the University of Montana, specifically its students. When it came to Ron Paul, we failed to cover that readership.
The decision to ignore Paul was consciously and deliberately made due to the fact that Paul had not generated the kind of broad-based national support that John McCain, Mitt Romney or Mike Huckabee had. We, like other media outlets, viewed him as an oddball candidate, not in step with his party and without national name recognition. In retrospect, we now see these may be the very qualities that draw people to Paul.
http://www.montanakaimin.com/index.p...we_were_wrong/
