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WORTH PURSUING? AN ANALYSIS INTO THE RELEVANCE OF THE NEWSPAPER ENDORSEMENT A Project presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School at the University of Missouri-Columbia In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts by SARAH KELLOGG Mark Horvit, Project Supervisor MAY 2018 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I first want to thank Mark Horvit, who has helped me with this project every step of the way. I most likely would not have a project if it weren’t for him. From helping me narrow down my research topic, to being an incredible editor at the statehouse, I owe a lot to him. My personal motto throughout my project semester was “If Mark isn’t worried, then I won’t be worried.” It helped me a lot. If I could have two first “thank yous” the second would go to Ryan Famuliner. Ryan has been my mentor for four years. From my undergraduate years to today, a large part of who I am as a radio reporter is because of him, and the rest of the KBIA staff. I want to thank all of them, but him especially, for encouraging me to play in all of the sandboxes as I explored who I could be as a reporter. I would also like to thank Sandy Davidson for being the third member of my committee and asking the questions that I wouldn’t have thought to ask. I want to thank all of my sources who gave up time in their busy schedules to talk to me. This project would not exist without all of your help so thank you: Steve Booher. Pat Conway, Dr. James Endersby, Kip Kendrick, Dr. Mitchell McKinney, Jonathan Ratliff, Tod Robberson, Caleb Rowden and Hank Waters III. I want to thank my roommates Kayla Myers and Erin Twenter for putting up with my very odd hours of working and spending a lot of time either stressed out or sleeping on the couch. I’ll move back into my room now. I want to thank all of my friends and family who have been wonderful and supportive throughout this entire process. Finally, I want to thank my parents, Rick and Debra Kellogg, for everything. Who I am is because of you two and I’m so grateful for everything you’ve done for me. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................................ ii Chapter 1. INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................1 2. FIELD NOTES .........................................................................................................4 3. SELF-EVALUATION ............................................................................................22 On-Site Supervisor Evaluation ...............................................................................27 4. NEWS CLIPS .........................................................................................................28 5. PROFESSIONAL ANALYSIS ...............................................................................61 APPENDIX .......................................................................................................................77 1. PROJECT PROPOSAL CHANGES ......................................................................77 2. PROJECT PROPOSAL ..........................................................................................78 3. INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPTS ............................................................................109 a. STEVE BOOHER ...................................................................................109 b. PAT CONWAY ......................................................................................116 c. DR. JAMES ENDERSBY ......................................................................121 d. KIP KENDRICK ....................................................................................130 e. DR. MITCHELL MCKINNEY ..............................................................137 f. JOHN RATLIFF .....................................................................................143 g. TOD ROBBERSON ...............................................................................152 h. CALEB ROWDEN .................................................................................162 i. HANK WATERS III ...............................................................................170 iii Chapter 1: Introduction If I could have extended my undergraduate career in journalism further, I would have. While I came into college knowing I wanted to study journalism and I graduated a semester later than I initially planned, there were courses that I still wanted to take and things I still wanted to learn before beginning my first job in a newsroom somewhere in the world. While I could provide a long list as to what else I wanted to learn, I think my biggest regret of my undergraduate career is that I did not do enough political reporting. My first time covering an election was when I was a freshman at The University of Missouri and I was reporting for KCOU, the student-run radio station on campus. Very nervous 19-year-old me went to a watch party for two state representatives. I was absolutely terrified and stumbled over my first live spots where the station called me for an update. However, I improved as the night went on, at the end of the party, I interviewed both candidates, passing the phone between myself and the winner as I asked my questions, and they answered them. After that night, and after I officially began reporting for KBIA, the NPR station in Mid-Missouri, my interest in politics remained. At KBIA, I covered two more election nights and loved the exhilaration I felt at a watch party. I interviewed attendees and candidates, live tweeted events and at the end of the day, got to assemble it all to a piece for listeners to hear the next day. While I loved election nights, no matter how late I stayed up, I knew that elections were only a small piece of all there is to cover with politics. While I would not switch out any of the classes I took at the Missouri School of Journalism, I wanted more time to take an actual course on political 1 reporting. Wanting this extension of time, I applied to graduate school with the full intent of using at least some of it to get more experience reporting on politics. I knew fairly early on that I wanted to do a professional project as opposed to a thesis. While I think it is important to study journalism theory, theory was not something I wanted to focus on for an entire semester of graduate school. I also knew if I came here wanting to report more, I needed the experience that a professional project allowed for and required. While I knew a lot of students pursuing a project finished their final semester at an internship either in New York City or Washington D.C., I did not want to leave Columbia. While the opportunity to intern in Washington D.C. was certainly appealing as an aspiring political reporter, there was no guarantee that I would actually get to cover Congress or the White House if I got an internship there. After talking to my then graduate advisor, now chair of my committee Mark Horvit, I determined that I would actually get the experience I enrolled in graduate school for if I stayed in Columbia and worked at the Missouri statehouse as a political reporter for KBIA. After pitching the idea to Ryan Famuliner, the News Director for KBIA, the internship aspect of my project was determined. What proved to be more difficult was deciding on a topic to explore for my analysis. Due to the necessity of writing a literature review for Mass Media Seminar, I began thinking about the 2016 election and why media outlets were still largely talking about it a few months into 2017. It led me to read an article that talked about the number of endorsements Hillary Clinton received over Donald Trump. In addition to just a higher number of endorsements in general, Clinton received the support of papers that traditionally went for the Republican candidate. This article led me to write my literature review on whether or not newspaper endorsements were influential in elections. While it made for an interesting literature review, proving actual 2 causation would be impossible in the amount of time I had for a project. After talking to my chair, the focus shifted from “Are endorsements influential” to “Do political campaigns even care about the endorsement and its relationship with the press?” With this change, I was ready to begin interviewing. Between and sometimes during my reporting shifts at the Capitol, I interviewed nine people about the relevancy of the newspaper endorsement: three Missouri lawmakers, three people involved in the media, two professors at The University of Missouri, and a political consultant for mainly republican candidates. Each person gave insightful and different opinions concerning political campaigns and their relationship with the press. When I look back on this project, I’m most proud of two things: my evolution as a political reporter, and my analysis of a traditional news practice that perhaps has not kept up with how media as a whole as changed. I leave graduate school with a better understanding of not only how to be a better journalist, but also how the relevancy of the press is viewed from my own lens. 3 Chapter 2: Field Notes Week 1: January 16-19 For the first week of the semester, I spent it at the statehouse becoming acquainted with the building and learning the norms and processes of the legislature. I also sat in on the house and senate, and attended the news conference held by the senate leadership on Thursday. While I gathered audio from the house and senate,