Amazes me how every year people seem shocked and offended by negative political ads. All I know if people are offended by local legislative races, then they sure won’t have the stomach for the upcoming presidential campaign.
Here in the Triad, N.C. House 79 candidates Bill Whitehart and Julia Howard are running negative ads on Rush Radio, while Senate District 27 candidates Trudy Wade and Justin Conrad are waging a tough campaign.
Interesting that an innocent bystander has been sucked into the Wade-Conrad fight—-N&R political reporter Joe Killian, who’s been forced to defend his coverage:
Why haven’t I been keeping up with the blog as well as I should? Why didn’t I, for instance, read the comments below and someone’s assertion that they received their Trudy Wade ad on the 12th, then follow up with Wade about it and update the blog item or create a new one?
Because “Yeah, I know I have daily deadlines on these four print stories that require me to read hundreds of pages of budget documents and do a dozen or more interviews and some complex math…also, I’ll probably have to pick up a story or two I didn’t plan on this week. But you’re going to have to wait on all that, because I have to update the blog and do a follow-up” is not what any editor wants to hear.
This is what a shrinking news room staff looks like.
I can’t help but wonder if Killian’s editor might think that in the time he took to write about how hard he’s working, perhaps he could be —working.
