Behind The Albuquerque Journal endorsements

In the mid-70s, when I first started working at the Albuquerque Journal, I was taken by the fury of a fellow reporter’s indignation at the paper’s editorial endorsements. “They didn’t ask me for my opinion!” he raged, and it was clear he didn’t agree with the way the paper went on that particular day.

That was when I, too, realized that a “newspaper’s” endorsements do not reflect a vote by the entire staff, but rather of the editorial board, which at that time in Journal history was a trio of men up on the third floor of a windowless, riot-proof edifice at Seventh and Silver. Theirs was an office few of us ever saw.

That physical firewall came down a bit in 1985 when the Journal left Downtown for Journal Center and a building spacious enough for all departments to share the same floor.

Reporters could see editorial board members in their communal office because all that separated us was glass. While it was infrequent, there was interaction between editorial page writers and reporters on a beat.

Two decades after joining the Journal staff, I joined the editorial board myself — and that’s when I came to learn that what the public reads in the endorsement column doesn’t necessarily reflect the votes or opinions of the editorial board either.

This might surprise those who read some of the other dailies around the state, whose endorsements factor in and openly reference divergent views of board members. For example, in polite prose that’s almost quaint, the Los Alamos Monitor referred to the “majority” of its editorial board favoring Carol Miller for Congress in the 3rd District and Barack Obama for president in its endorsements, and said in its section on the U.S. Senate race:

In a nearly unanimous — but lukewarm — vote, the editorial board chose to recommend Udall for the seat. While he is not an ideal choice, and once again an election seems to come down to a bit of the lesser of two evils, Udall does seem to have a better temperament — something that will be needed in the trying days ahead.

It’s not like that in Journal endorsements, which adhere to the classic idea of the unsigned editorial, usually with a certitude that implies consensus of the board. The endorsement usually props up the one being endorsed while rarely acknowledging any weaknesses.

The Journal’s Sunday endorsement of McCain is a classic example: It simply ignores the existence of running mate Sarah Palin, even though she factored prominently in endorsement explanations around the nation by a number of daily papers that eschewed McCain.

Generally, Journal endorsements also refrain from pointing out the weaknesses of an opponent, even when those weaknesses are the deciding factor in selecting the endorsee.

In reading an editorial like the one for McCain, I suspect the writer was writing what s/he was told to write, much as a debate team member is told his or her position at the start of a meet.

And I’m reminded of an anecdote frequently told by the late Lee Hirst, who ran a PR firm in New York City before setting up The Hirst Company in Albuquerque in the 1970s. Hirst always said he held journalists in esteem because his father had been an editorial writer in Trenton, N.J., and, as in most cities back then, Trenton was a two-newspaper town. Also typical: Whatever position one paper took, the opposite would be the stance of the other — just like a debate.

But here’s the kicker: Hirst claimed that when the editor of his father’s competition was ill or out of pocket, Hirst’s father would write the editorials for both papers — each with the opposite view.

Now, sharing writers would have been anathema at the Journal and Tribune. Although we had a lot of respect for one another and were, by virtue of the Joint Operating Agreement, under the same roof at both Journal Center and the building Downtown, we were editorially separate — and constantly explaining that fact to a public understandably confused because delivery trucks and coin-slot sale boxes bore both papers’ names.

It was clear to most readers, however, how distinct the two dailies were when it came to endorsements. The Trib would be counted on to lean liberal (with the shocking exception of 2004, when Scripps Howard made all its papers endorse George W. Bush) and the Journal would take a different tack.

The absence of the Trib and loss of that two-paper dynamic might possibly explain some of the rumors prior to Sunday that the Journal might endorse Obama.

But even with its own poll showing its constituents favoring Obama 51 percent, the Journal went with the 43-percenter: McCain.

To be clear, and I may be handing out the keys to the kingdom in even having this discussion, the Journal’s editorials do reflect the views of the editorial board in most cases, although the votes of some members carry more weight than others. When I first started on the editorial page, the board included two editors: the late Gerald J. Crawford as senior editor and Kent Walz as editor. They often set the agenda, joined by editorial page editor Bill Hume; an assistant editor; two writers; and, later, a letters editor. For eight years, I was one of the writers. (The last four of those years, my colleague David Alire Garcia was the other. We both reacted to Sunday’s Journal endorsements with comments: Read his take here.)

It is not unusual for publishers to be involved in editorial endorsements and even have veto power. At a conference of editorial writers I attended some years ago, interference from publishers was a hot topic among editorial editors who described a sometimes dictatorial control we did not experience at the Journal.

Journal Publisher T.H. Lang did get involved in deciding whether to approve what the editorial board had deliberated, notably in big races, such as the office of president. At times, it was a guessing game as to what would become of our picks, eventually answered after the editor carried the slate to the corner office upstairs.

Such was the case in the deliberations of 2004.

Historically, the Journal had endorsed many Republicans, but not across the board; notable examples are its endorsements of Bruce King for governor and Bill Clinton for president.

Having endorsed George W. Bush in 2000, it seemed likely the Journal would go that route again, despite the fact that our general editorial policy at the time was “socially liberal and fiscally conservative” (with some obvious exceptions), as the steady stream of civic leaders and newsmakers who came through our doors were often told. The Bush years had been neither.

Some papers around the nation that historically endorsed Republicans for president declined in 2004 to endorse anyone, loathe as they were to endorse Bush or John Kerry.

So, I thought declining to endorse a possible option for the Journal, and suggested it as our position. After I laid out the negatives of the Bush administration and positives about Kerry’s record in the Senate, the discussions circled the table — and all comments about Bush fit the negative column until we came back around the circle to Walz. In light of our remarks, Walz said he would take two suggestions to the publisher: Go with Kerry or don’t endorse.

We all know who ended up with the endorsement. Bush had both the Journal and the Tribune — and the actual support of neither of their editorial boards.