Two Excellent Examples of Campaign Journalism

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Just one day after I defended campaign journalism by saying that there aren’t enough differences between Clinton and Obama to produce the in-depth pieces the public is craving, I’ve found two such pieces. But by highlighting the many minor differences between Clinton and Obama (and in one of the two articles, Edwards), the pieces kind of underscore my point.

The first piece comes from the Las Vegas Sun. It acknowledges that the candidates basically have the same goals when it comes to domestic policy, but drills down on six issues and makes note of the differences on the margins. At times, the best the Sun can do is point to small differences in emphasis or focus. But if you’re interested in learning more about Obama vs. Clinton vs. Edwards on economic issues, health care, education, nuclear power, internet gambling, and immigration, check out the Sun‘s good work.

The second comes from CQ Politics, where they’ve taken a long look at Clinton’s and Obama’s records in the Senate. Neither candidate, CQ argues, really buck the party line all that often, and neither has taken the lead on major pieces of legislation. Clinton is a more incremental in her approach than Obama, but neither can rightfully claim to be a true “agent of change.” In fact, John McCain meets the definition they both put forward on the stump better than they do. It’s quite long and quite good; find it here.

So, yes, you can do in-depth pieces on the candidates. But you can’t do all that many: now that the Sun and CQ Politics have done these pieces, they won’t be able to do something similar anytime soon. If they want to publish every single day…. they have to take rightly deserved kudos and head back to the horserace.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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