Three questions about campaign coverage

I want to raise some questions about the craft of campaign reporting—questions whose answers may begin to emerge with the rush of returns on election night, but will only become clearer with more reflective post-election analysis. These are the some of the queries that need to be wrestled with before campaign junkies like me make our first exploratory trips of the 2016 campaign to Iowa and New Hampshire next summer.

1. Does a National Election Exist Any More? If, as I suspect, swing-state polls turn out to have been a more accurate predictor of the election than national surveys, then news organizations and campaign reporters may have to rethink how they cover presidential politics.
2. Did Reporters Spend Too Much Time with the Candidates and Not Enough with Voters? With candidate press conferences now a relic from the Osborne computer era and aides increasingly taking refuge in robotic spin, it is worth asking whether travel on campaign planes can be justified in this era of parched newsroom budgets.
3. Did the Press Corps Do Enough To Follow the Money? In this case, the answer is already known—and, sadly, it’s “no.”