"The day after the election, I heard from readers who were quite pleased that our "endorsee" lost. Nothing the P-I wrote, they said, helped Kerry. Or go down the list.

I have no idea whether the endorsement helped any candidate. I view endorsements as part of a daily discourse, a conversation starter.

But I also wonder whether it's time to do something else -- perhaps even getting out of the endorsement business.

A lot of readers do not see a difference between the P-I news report and opinion. So when they read "endorsement," they think it applies across the board, to every story published in the newspaper. The newspaper endorsed So and So and that skews the coverage, or so they say."

Get the Story:
Mark Trahant: Endorsements -- are they helpful? (The Seattle Post-Intelligencer 11/7)

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