How to land on the front page

Fairness, balance are increasing casualties of new age of journalism

As the provincial election approaches, politicians, party organizers, partisan observers, and ordinary news consumers will — as always — be on the lookout for who’s getting what coverage.

And editors everywhere are discussing what’s fair.

If you’ll pardon the parliamentary jargon, the writ has yet to be dropped, but the candidates are well into campaign mode, providing “media opportunities” for reporters and photographers.

Doug Ford is holding rallies across the province, and was in Hamilton Tuesday.

The new Ontario Progressive Conservative leader made things easy for us at The Spectator, by answering questions about the LRT, thereby warranting frontpage coverage complete with a photograph.

But I think he might have ended up there anyway. After all, not only is he a new and untested leader, he’s Doug Ford: controversial, unpredictable, populist, and not insignificantly, brother of the late Rob ford.

Premier Kathleen Wynne appeared in Hamilton the very next day, and found herself in the very same place on our front page. She also made things easy for us by promising a new home retrofit program and partnering with the feds.

But I wonder, again, whether she would have ended up there anyway.

She’s the premier, after all, and is always handing out money. Everybody likes that. Appearing for cameras in a blue hard hat with the mayor and MPP Ted McMeekin at Stelco didn’t hurt.

And finally, Ford made the front page the day before. What would Liberal supporters have said if he appeared one day and she didn’t the next — or vice versa?

Lo and behold, Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horwath, a Hamiltonian, made a stop here Friday, so we felt she deserved some kind of front-page treatment, regardless of whether she said anything new.

Such are the considerations editors give mainstream political parties during elections. We like to call it fairness and balance.

But perhaps these are old rules of journalism.

In a modern digital world, news organizations are writing about what people want to read, and what people want is new, exciting, outrageous, creative, innovative. The days of platitudes, empty promises and clichés are over.

Or are they? Maybe it’s not so much what is said, but how it is said.

Photo-ops have long been a huge part of election coverage, and campaign managers know it. Get your candidate in front of an exciting backdrop, or involved in something unusual, and it’s more likely to land on the front page. Get them doing something unusual and heroic — even better.

But today, a mere photo is no longer enough. You need a video clip, preferably a short, but very sweet one.

For a definition of short and sweet, look no further than U.S. President Donald Trump, who in 2016 turned election coverage on its ear. All of a sudden, coverage of politics didn’t seem fair and balanced, no matter your perspective.

Now, journalists across North America hang on every word coming from a man now widely regarded as untruthful, unknowledgeable, unshameable and — better than almost anything for news junkies — unpredictable.