True confession: Gateway Journalism Review’s staff is made up of political junkies with long traditions of monitoring election-evening results. Our own political media monitoring likely mirrors that of much of the American population. So, at the risk of being too introspective, here is how GJR staffers spent Tuesday evening.
In 2013 the women elected to office this week start their new terms. The year also will bring speculation on the fate of women and the Republican Party, as well as who might make a presidential run in 2016. Does the name Hillary Clinton sound familiar? In light of this, GJR is preparing an in-depth look at media coverage of women and politics for the Winter 2013 issue.
With so much sloganeering and mud-slinging leading up to the Nov. 2 mid-term elections, the challenge for Chicago’s news media—print, broadcast, online—was whether to echo the races’ shallow bombast … or cut through to the issues. By and large, the metropolitan press held to the latter, more difficult course. Which is saying something, given the staff cutbacks and news hole shrinkage of late.
Labor Day marks the time to get more serious about predicting the outcome of the November national elections. Political scientists—including this one—have recently returned from the American Political Science Association Annual Meeting. In even-numbered years, there is invariably one or more sessions on projecting the outcome based on past trends and mid-to-late summer poll results.