MEDIA
How My Little Paper Would Have Handled Trump
Take it from a former small-town editor
I never worked at the New York Times or Wall Street Journal. But former President Donald Trump would have withered away if the national press had half the guts my small-town staff had.
As editor of a small daily, I was there to serve our readers, not candidates or politicians.
Here’s what we did differently
Some years ago, a completely unqualified man ran for mayor. He had never held any public office and nothing in his background suggested he had relevant experience. In fact, each time one of my reporters interviewed him, he made claims that were roughly analogous to Trump’s claims that he was going to build a wall and make Mexico pay for it.
As an example, he claimed he would fix the main drag running through my city, but the city had no control because it was (at that time) under the control of the state. News flash: The mayor had no more power than you do to fix a state roadway.
The reporter came to me and asked how she was supposed to handle this. If a candidate is making claims that we knew very well were impossible, did we simply report what he said? That, I felt, would be misleading.
