Christopher Hayes' Proposals for Good Campaign Coverage

His proposals are pretty common sense, but they would improve coverage a lot:

Then there’s the additional problem that the longer a reporter spends with a campaign, the more likely they’ll develop either a kind of contempt for the candidate and the campaign or a strange version of stockholm syndrome. Clearly this was the case during 2000 and 2004 when the dislike for both Gore and Kerry was palpable. This might be natural and human, but it breeds awful journalism.

Finally, we have the perenial complaint that the coverage focuses on the horse-race and the theater of the campaign and not on the issues. But I don’t really think that’s the fault of reporters. First, they have to file constantly on short deadlines. So even if Obama releases a tax plan one day, and you write a piece about that, that’s still only a one-day story. What do you write about the next day? Why, Obama sniping with Hillary or somesuch. Second of all, consider the imbalance in expertise between a campaign and those who cover it. When Obama releases a tax plan, it’s a product of a team of policy experts, who know the terrain inside and out. But the reporter who has to file the deadline piece about it doesn’t have any expertise on tax policy. So how could their coverage be anything but shallow?

His proposals:

• Rotate Reports. After covering a candidate for a few weeks, they have heard the stump speech dozens of times, and wouldn't know a new policy initiative if it bit them on the ass.
• More long form non-deadline pieces. (If someone has been with a candidate for months, they can provide deeper insights).
• Assign campaign coverage to beat reports. Hays gives the example of the New York Times' Jeff Zeleny covering an Obama tax proposal. The problem was that Zeleny does not do taxes, and most reporters are innumerate. However, the Times does have reporters who can do taxes and count, like David Cay Johnston, who has won a Pulitzer in this area.

The only thing that I would add is that, particularly for papers like the LA Times, WaPo, and Times, who can pick and choose their talent, don't hire innumerate reporters.

I don't care if you are covering politics, or architecture, or fashion, if you cannot read a balance sheet, you have no business being a reporter.

We are not talking differential equations, or even calculus, we are talking Algebra that should have been mastered in high school.