In an era of abysmally low levels of trust in media, local news sources still retain special connections – and precious credibility – with readers and viewers. Those relationships may prove especially valuable in the coming days as the 2024 election comes to a close.
In swing states like North Carolina and Michigan, local journalists have doubled as campaign experts, covering presidential candidate rallies and interviewing voters by the dozen.
CNN asked seven swing state editors and reporters about what they’ve been experiencing in the run-up to Election Day.
In Michigan, Nicole Avery Nichols, the top editor of the Detroit Free Press, said her Monday front page headline, “Candidates sprint to finish,” was also true writ large.
“So many emotions flood in at the end of a sprint or any big race – exhaustion, exhilaration, and sometimes fear,” she said. “Based on our reporting, Michigan voters carry a range of palpable emotions and diverse perspectives. But one emotion that seems to have been supplanted over the last few months is apathy.”
If the expected rematch between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump was a turnoff to the voting public, and thus not much of a traffic or ratings driver for news outlets, the ascendance of Vice President Kamala Harris to the top of the Democratic ticket was an absolute reset. Apathy was replaced by intensity.
In North Carolina, Rana Cash, the executive editor of the Charlotte Observer, said Harris voters “have a sense of enthusiasm and hope that she’s able to replicate what Obama did in 2008 – winning NC for the first (and only) time since Jimmy Carter.” But the enthusiasm for Trump is palpable too: In North Carolina, “Republicans turned out at higher-than-ever numbers during early voting, although it was close,” with Republicans only slightly ahead of Democrats overall.
Cash said that right now “it feels like all politics is national – as opposed to the traditional saying that all politics is local.”
Frustration and fatigue, but common ground
Regional and local news sources are often uniquely able to channel the sentiments of their communities. In Tucson, Arizona, David McCumber, the executive editor of the Arizona Daily Star, who manages the paper’s op-eds and letters to the editor, said voters are extremely anxious.
“There’s an apocalyptic cast to this election – writers on both sides are saying the future of the world hinges on it,” he said.
At the same time, many of the local journalists who spoke with CNN used different words to describe the complex emotions at play.
In Georgia, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has invested heavily in statewide polling and stationed reporters across the city and state.
“Months of reporting and listening have told us this: Georgia voters are largely dissatisfied with our country’s direction,” editor-in-chief Leroy Chapman Jr. said. “That has been consistent in poll after poll. It shows up in our reporting and we expect dissatisfaction to factor heavily into how Georgians vote.”
In Nevada, Las Vegas Review-Journal politics reporter Jessica Hill said she has also detected “a lot of election fatigue.”
“Because we’re a swing state, we’ve gotten bombarded with advertisements, campaign visits, text messages and phone calls for months,” Hill said. “There’s some people who are extremely knowledgeable about the election and the candidates’ positions on the issues, but there’s also a lot of Nevadans who are just not paying attention. I think there’s a good mix of people who are actively engaged in politics and those who are trying to tune it out.”
In Wisconsin, Mark Treinen, the editor of The Capital Times in Madison, suggested the press should not overlook all that Americans have in common, even as they argue over politics.
Referring to national news coverage of Wisconsin, Treinen said, “I’ve read some very fine, well-informed work about the many types of voters and issues in this swing state, but I’ve also seen stories that define (and divide) entire communities by their presidential preferences. That’s really not my experience having lived and worked in many of those towns.”
“I’m not saying there aren’t stark differences of opinion, and some overzealous conduct,” Treinen said, “but generally people are living and working around each other with little conflict.”
Nichols, the Detroit Free Press editor, made a similar point. “Make no mistake, the environment is much more angst-filled with concern than the last two presidential cycles,” she said, “but there is a sentiment of hope for our democracy and faith in the integrity of our elections.”
The stakes versus the odds
Some acclaimed local news outlets have tried to prioritize what candidates have done in the past and what they’ve said they will do in the future, as opposed to horse-race style coverage.
Jim Malewitz, managing editor of Wisconsin Watch, a nonprofit news organization, said “we focus more on equipping voters with information they need to make informed choices about candidates running to represent them — with an eye on filling gaps in local coverage. That includes educating folks about how our election systems work, how to vote, where candidates stand on the issues they care about, whether many of the claims they hear are true and exposing any efforts to undermine the democratic process or add barriers to voting.”
A “how to vote” guide has been front and center on Wisconsin Watch’s website ahead of Election Day.
Malewitz and Treinen, of The Capital Times, both said they haven’t seen much national coverage of how Trump’s mass deportation vow would rattle the state’s immigrant-dependent dairy industry, for example.
“If there’s a mass deportation,” Treinen asked, “how many of our residents might be rounded up, how many farms and other businesses raided, families separated? What would be the fallout here?”
New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen coined the phrase “not the odds, but the stakes” to encourage more coverage of election consequences.
Chapman Jr., the editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, said reporters who live closest to the story are best equipped to chronicle the twists and turns.
Since 2020, when Georgia’s election results were challenged by Trump and his allies, “national media has largely fixated on conventional politics and profiling voting groups in Georgia that might determine the outcome,” he said. “While important, we have also deeply reported on the MAGA lurch of the Georgia state election board, the 19 election board members across nine Georgia counties who have objected to certifying elections during the past four years and groundwork being laid to possibly sow chaos this election cycle.”
“We strongly think that investment in reporting prepares us for this moment,” he said, “where we could again see similar challenges.”
