Tuesday, October 7, 2008

The Record's Obama endorsement: Legit endorsement or PR move?

Remember when the Record endorsed Barack Obama a couple of weeks ago?

Yeah, we didn't care either. Yes, we're well aware that it's their first endorsement of a democrat since FDR. The Huffington Post even wrote a piece about it, but does it really matter?

California is in the tank for Obama. Which is easily the most frustrating part of this seemingly endless election process. Everybody knows our electoral votes are going to whoever the democrats throw out there, so why is there such a big fuss over a useless endorsement? Because the Record wanted it that way.

The Record's endorsement of Obama is more a PR move than an actual endorsement. They played up the fact that they've endorsed republican presidential candidates for 72 years and piggybacked on Obama's message of change to try and garner press from the easiest people to bait, political bloggers.

Of course HuffPo took the bait and the Record got to witness the measured political discourse the internet is known for. Somehow they were able to squeeze another column out of this subject on Sunday. (Summary of that column "Look at all the hits we got!) (Side note: thanks for explaining the cryptic journalism term "page views" Don. Nice to know you think we're idiots.)

While I'm happy that the Record finally got their heads out of their asses to support the obvious choice for president, I just wish they'd done it for the right reasons.

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