Sun-Times endorsements no more:
With this in mind, the Chicago Sun-Times Editorial Board will approach election coverage in a new way. We will provide clear and accurate information about who the candidates are and where they stand on the issues most important to our city, our state and our country. We will post candidate questionnaires online. We will interview candidates in person and post the videos online. We will present side-by-side comparisons of the candidates’ views on the key issues. We will post assessments made by respected civic and professional groups, such as the Chicago Bar Association’s guide to judicial candidates.
What we will not do is endorse candidates. We have come to doubt the value of candidate endorsements by this newspaper or any newspaper, especially in a day when a multitude of information sources allow even a casual voter to be better informed than ever before.
True dat (as Pat Hickey would say). Chi Daily News man at The Hall, Jay McMullen, used to look at the anti-Daley I editorials and scoff. News stories, many of which he wrote, were what mattered, he said.
On the other hand, not having to endorse Obama in the fall has the advantage of not having to explain why.
Blithe Spirit 
Reblogged this on Not for Attribution.
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From the get-go in your Editorial of Monday, January 21, Why we will no longer endorse in elections, the Chicago Sun Times Editorial Board made quite clear that the Sun-Times was founded in 1941 by Marshall Field III to counter here in the Midwest the partisanship of Col. Robert McCormick and his Chicago Tribune, which leaned right for many years, during the Roosevelt adminstration.
Images take a long time to restore, as is often the situation politicians face when their reputations have been sullied through the spread of false information.
Questions to consider:
1. By no longer endorsing candidates in elections, will it really make a difference in countering long-held perceptions that the Sun-Times is a left-leaning newspaper?
2. If newspaper endorsements are of important to some readers, might people gravitate toward the Tribune instead for guidance?
3. By keeping on the staff commentary writers like Laura Washington, Richard Roeper, Ester Cepeda and Lynn Sweet, all of whom espouse left of center rhetoric, how will it be possible to attract subscribers other than your core group of readers, so essential to keeping the Sun-Times afloat?
Might it be that the Sun-Times is queasy about endorsing its home town candidate for a second term, President Barack Obama, and that by squashing Sun-Times endorsements the Editorial Board will be relieved of publishing the reason why!
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“What we will not do is endorse candidates.”
To quote Dorothy Parker, “How can you tell?”
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