People tell me all the time that The Denver Post isn’t bothering to cover local elections, like State House races, for example. I usually defend The Post by saying that the paper has to set priorities, and just how many local elections are there in the metro area? A ton.

And besides, the newspaper does provide online resources with lots of info about local candidates. In an interview in Feb., Post Political Editor Curtis Hubbard told me that The Post may provide more coverage of local political races in its YourHub supplement. And this seems to be happening, though I haven’t looked at the YourHub coverage in a systematic way.

So with space for local elections at such a premium, it’s a surprise to see stories about State House races in The Post, like today’s piece about three pimaries for House seats.

But the piece was a major disappointment with a focus mostly on minor squabbles and sparring among candidates–without single serious local issue spotlighted.

The article covered the District 4, 5, and 9 State House races.

The coverage of the District 4 race focused on whether Dan Pabon got special treatment. No evidence was cited by The Post, though it reported that complaints had been lodged but no verdict rendered; a Democratic spokeswoman “feared” that the caucus results might have to be tossed.

The portion of the article on the District 5 race centered on a hostile email exchange between a Cristina Duran supporter, not affiliated with Duran’s campaign team, and candidate Jose Silva.

As for the District 9 portion of the article, it focused on a dispute over whether a Republican party official should have pointed out that one candidate was on probation for a petty offense of disturbing the peace.

I think fights among candidates are important for voters to know about. How they are handled by candidates is illuminating.

But with so little ink available for these races, and no money or serious judgment calls involved yet, I think the focus for The Post, especially for the print edition, should be on the issues. And god knows there are many at play at the Legislature, including education, the budget, the environment, and many more. Next time, pick a couple issues tell us where the candidates stand.

There’s an entertaining and illuminating article in the Craig Daily Press today, titled “McConnell campaign counts on contituents’ anger, tea party principles.” The story profiles Republican Mark McConnell who’s competing against State Representative Scott Tipton for the chance to run against Congressman John Salazar.

The story explains that McConnell campaigns tirelessly, describes himself as the “‘Cowboy Colonel,'” and has $6,000 in the bank versus $102,000 for Tipton. One of his apparent supporters was quoted as saying that McConnell has “‘done a lot of rat killing in his life, and I think he’ll do a lot of rat killing in Washington.'”

I was looking forward to reading about his policy positions, and I encountered these paragraphs:

McConnell, 63, summed up his policy ideas quickly Monday.

“We need a massive reduction in spending,” he said.

McConnell said that could mean abolishing the federal Department of Education …- an idea floated by Republican U.S. Senate candidate Jane Norton …- moving poverty programs “back to neighborhoods” to reduce dependency on federal programs, and even reorganizing the federal Department of Defense to cut its spending. That’s a rare position for a retired colonel who is the son of a U.S. Navy fighter pilot and said national defense is “the ultimate federal responsibility.”

It wasn’t clear that McConnell favors abolishing the Department of Education and reorganizing the Defense Department, because the reporter used the phrase “could mean.” So I called the reporter to clarify things, but he wasn’t working today.Then I called McConnell himself, and he was happy to tell me that, yes, he does favor abolishing the Department of Eductation.

In its coverage yesterday of House Speaker Terrance Carroll’s draft plan to modernize election registration rules, The Denver Post stated that “Capitol Republicans have cast the legislation as an attempt by Democrats to skew elections in their favor, and one that could endanger the integrity of elections.”

The Post should take a look at the provisions of the draft bill and report whether, in fact, they would do this.

One provision, same-day registration, doesn’t favor Democrats or Republicans, according to Curtis Gans, Director of the Center for the Study of the American Electorate at American University in Washington D.C.  

Gans was quoted yesterday by Post columnist Vincent Carroll, who mocked attempts by liberals to expand voting opportunities as ineffective and inviting fraud. But Carroll did not argue that the draft election registration reforms would benefit Democrats over Republicans, as you might expect, given the initial partisan rhetoric that emerged Tuesday. http://www.denverpost.com/carroll/ci_14832170

Vincent Carroll quoted Gans as stating that high voter turnout (as opposed to same-day registration, specifically) hasn’t helped Democrats more than Republicans and that same-day registration, specifically, increases voter turnout only marginally.

I called Gans today and asked him if he believes same-day registration, specifically, benefits Democrats or Republicans, because this wasn’t clear from reading Carroll’s column.

“I think it’s not predictable at all,” he answered. “We have been shown that it’s not predictable one way or the other. There’s plenty of evidence.”

He added: “So long as a state does not have a history or likelihood of abuse of the registration system…- fraudulent registration, voting in the name of dead people, that sort of thing…-there is no harm and maybe a little good that can come out of election-day registration.”

Colorado has no such history of election fraud, as far as I could find.

I asked Gans, “What’s the little good that can come of same-day registration?”

“The good part is, that if people get interested in the election closer to the election, they don’t have to sit it out because they’re not registered,” he told me. “That’s the good part. It enhances the opportunity to vote.”

If Gans is correct, the election-day-registration component of Terrance Carroll’s draft bill is not the reason Republicans are telling The Post that they think Carroll’s plan is an “attempt to skew elections” in the Democrats’ favor.

As Carroll’s plan is debated, The Post should explain why Republicans think elements of initial draft bill are unfair or inviting fraud and offer different views about whether Republican objections are reasonable. This would be a useful addition to the debate.

If you read today’s Denver Post editorial about the draft “Modernization of Elections” bill, you’d be excused for thinking the bill is dead for this session.

The editorial discusses the draft bill mostly in the past tense–and argues that it should be taken up next session, with modifications.

The first sentence of the editorial reads:

“An interesting set of election reforms that merited consideration has been shelved at the Colorado legislature.”

Actually, the bill has NOT been shelved for this session, according to a reliable source.

And something else you wouldn’t know from reading The Post today: County clerks support the draft bill. More on them later.

During the year, I’ll be asking Denver journalists what they’ve been up to since leaving the Rocky or The Post…-and what they think of the state of Colorado journalism these days.

I previously queried former Denver Post columnists Jim Spencer and Bob Ewegen, among others.

John Rebchook covered real estate and other topics at the Rocky Mountain News from 1983 until the newspaper closed in February 2009. “I believe I have the dubious distinction of having covered business topics longer than any other journalist in Denver’s history,” John emailed me. “(Of course, it is inevitable now that I’ve said that, someone will prove me wrong.)”

Here’s what John has to say (via an email) about 1) his current situation and 2) the state of Colorado journalism:

1. After the Rocky closed, I was approached by Peter Lansing, head of Universal Lending, one of the largest privately held mortgage banking companies in Denver. I had known Peter for about 25 years and had a great deal of respect for him. During the go-go days of mortgage financing, Universal Lending stayed away from the toxic loan products, such as Option ARMS and other subprime mortgages. He left a lot of money on the table, but he refused to sell mortgages that he decided were poison for consumers. By virtue of this, his company survived and prospered, when many others imploded.

In the waning days of the Rocky, Peter said he would like to talk to me about career choices, if the paper closed. He said he enjoys giving advice, and has a knack for it.  After the Rocky was shut, we met for lunch one rainy, cold day last spring. Peter said he would like to sponsor me in some fashion, but he didn’t know how or in exactly what form. He said there are a lot of opinion pieces on real estate on the Web, but virtually no reporting. I asked Peter if we went forward on this, would I be able to speak to his competitors. “I insist on it,” he said. He said he did not want to control or influence the editorial content. I, of course, could quote him, from time to time as I did at the Rocky, when appropriate. For him, it would be a type of passive marketing to get his company’s name in front of real estate professionals and consumers.  About eight months ago, InsideRealEstateNews.com  was born.  Land Title Guarantee also joined as a sponsor. I’ve enjoyed writing the blog a great deal. It keeps me in touch with what is happening in the real estate world, and gives me more freedom to choose my own topics than I had at the Rocky. I also have enjoyed learning about the technical aspects of blogging. I create my own graphics, such as tables; take and post my own photographs; and shoot and post my own videos. My blog has been growing by leaps and bounds. I make a fraction of what I made at the Rocky, however, and economically it can only continue in this form if I get more sponsors and/or advertising. I’m working on both of those options. Hopefully, I will be able to make a decent living writing my blog. I also have completed a number of freelance writing and editing assignments. I am a total free agent. I even appeared on a commercial for Bass Pro, in which I posed as an instructor for a bird-watching class!

2. Without a doubt, I think Denver would be better off with two competitive, daily newspapers. It certainly keeps reporters on their toes when they know that a reporter at the rival paper is competing against them. Competition is good. That said, it is quite amazing that two papers of the same size survived as long as they did, given the economic realities of everything from Craig’s List, declining readership among young people, and all of the news available on the Web. One of the ironies of losing my job at the Rocky is that I now have more time to read the Denver Post and the Wall Street Journal. I think the Post has done an admirable job of covering the news since the Rocky closed. Many of my former colleagues relish finding the occasional bad lede to poke fun at, but the truth is that every reporter from time to time wrote ledes that were stinkers. I hated looking at my stories after I wrote them, at the Rocky, because I knew I would find something I would change, with the pressure of the deadline behind me. I certainly thought all of the reporters at the Post were worthy competitors when I was at the Rocky, and they are still excellent journalists and reporters. When I was at the Rocky, I always looked at the Post long before the sun rose, to see if I had been beaten on a story. Too many days I would go to work in a dark mood because my butt had been kicked. I would also say that when I traveled around the country, I would always look at the local papers. Outside of a few major cities, I never found papers that I thought were as good as the Denver Post or the Rocky Mountain News for local and business coverage. And I thought the business sections of both papers put to shame the business sections of much bigger papers. For example, when I would visit my family in suburban Chicago, where I grew up, I always thought that the business sections at either of the Denver papers were far superior to the business section of the Chicago Tribune. I also think that people tend to expect too much from an individual paper.  Years ago, I was talking to a guy who owned a real estate company in Denver. He had been invited to a focus group of readers at the Rocky to see what they wanted in a paper. Basically, they said they wanted everything. But he felt like they were deluding themselves. Were they really going to read a 20-inch story about Senegal or a 40-inch story about a new Volvo factory in Sweden? The real estate owner each day read Denver dailies, the Wall Street Journal, and USA Today. Only then, did he think that he received a good overview of what was going on. He felt it was incumbent upon the reader to broaden his or his perspective by going to a wide variety of publications. He did not think any single newspaper could provide “one-stop reading” to fulfill all of your news needs. Now that the Denver Post has won the newspaper war here, I’ve thought back to that conversation often. I think it is as true now as it was back in the day.

A March 28 Denver Post article offered a misleading tidbit that I should have pointed out earlier.

I’m not referring to the headline of the Post article, which was bad enough. It read “Markey a Polarizing Force in the 4^th Congressional District.” The article wasn’t about whether Markey was “polarizing.” It was about her vote on health care, so a headline related to health care would have been more meaningful.

But more serious is something the story left out.

Discussing the responses to Markey’s vote for the federal health-care bill, The Post reported:

Fred Vierra of Cherry Hills Village lives outside the 4^th Congressional District but sent Republican congressional candidate Cory Gardner [who’s opposing Markey] a $1,000 donation.

“You can thank Betsy Markey’s health care vote for this check,” he wrote last week in a note to the campaign.

From reading this, you could easily think Vierra’s $1,000 donation is money Gardner wouldn’t have gotten if Markey had opposed the health care bill.

But you need to spend five minutes on the Federal Election Commission website to discover that Vierra is a well-known Colorado GOP donor, who regularly gives to candidates outside of his district of residence and outside of our state.

In fact, Vierra gave $2,000 to Marilyn Musgrave in 2005 and again in 2006. Before the health care bill was twinkle in Obama’s eye, Vierra gave $1,000 or more to Sam Brownback of Kansas, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, John Thune of South Dakota, former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, former Montana Senator Conrad Burns, and others, all Republicans. He gave $55,000 to John McCain in 2008. In Colorado, in addition to Musgrave, he’s given big money to Republicans Wayne Allard, Mike Coffman, Rick O’Donnell, Jane Norton, Bob Schaffer, Tom Tancredo, and others. The list goes on and on. It’s pretty amazing, really. Type “Fred Vierra” on this page of the FEC website.

Especially because The Post included the contextual detail that Vierra “lives outside” of Markey’s Distrct, The Post should have informed us of Vierra’s status as a national Republican donor living in Colorado.

A phrase like “Vierra, who gave over $400,000 to Republican candidates across the country since 1998-” would have done the trick. Or even something like, “Vierra, a well-known Republican donor in Colorado -.”

Of course, it’s possible that Vierra wouldn’t have coughed up $1,000 for Gardner if Markey had opposed the health care bill.

But still, Vierra’s history of donating should have been mentioned, to give us a full picture of what’s going on here…-and to let us decide what to make of it.

Not only us, but news media as well. Here’s what I mean:

After The Post ran the article with the anecdote about Vierra’s $1,000 check, a Post reader, Ann Westmeyer, sent Gardner a clipping of The Post’s article, a $25 check , and a note that read, “Again, you can thank Betsy Markey’s healthcare vote for this check,” according to story on The Post’s political blog, The Spot.

Westmeyer’s note stated that she also lived “outside the district,” according to The Post, which unfortunately quoted its own story about Vierra’s $1,000 check, again omitting the information that Vierra is a major Republican donor statewide and nationally.

And guess what happened next? This two-part story, about Vierra’s check and The Post’s article that another donation to Gardner, was picked up by the Washington Post today in an article headlined “In Colorado, health-care debate reverberates in congressional race.”

The Washington Post recounted The Denver Post’s story, reporting:

After the health-care bill passed, a voter from outside the district sent the Republican’s [Gardner’s] campaign a contribution with a note: “Please thank Betsy Markey for this check.” When The Denver Post wrote about it, another voter sent a copy of the article along with a donation to Gardner’s campaign with a note: “Again, you can thank Betsy Markey’s health-care vote for this check.”

That’s how the news media feed on themselves to build a narrative (Angry voters donating to unseat a congresswoman.). Unfortunately, in this case, a piece of the foundation of the narrative is partially rotten, lacking critical context.

I’m supposed to watching the media, but Denver Post reporter Lynn Bartels puts me to shame.

She can not only “half listen” to CNN from the “other room” but, at the same time, recognize that someone is saying something on CNN that Jane Norton said during a speech over six months ago.

As she reported on The Post’s blog, The Spot, Bartels heard Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) use a quotation that came from Norton’s mouth when Norton launched her senatorial campaign Sept. 15.

But there was one big difference. Rodgers properly attributed the quotation to former President Gerald Ford. And Norton did not.

Norton said, “I believe a government big enough to give you everything you want, is a government that’s big enough to take everything you have.”

Ford said, “A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.”

Bartels’ discovery of this was pretty impressive, but her blog post didn’t offer any perspective on whether this is plagiarism on Norton’s part.

Journalists should take plagiarism ultra seriously, right, since some of them get fired for doing it. Not to mention the fact that plagiarist isn’t a skill we’re looking for in our future elected officials.

So I emailed a leading poobah in field of journalism ethics, Robert Steele, to find out whether Norton’s apparent act of plagiarism should, in fact, be considered plagiarism and what would happen to a journalist who did what Norton did.

Prof. Steele is the Nelson Poynter Scholar for Journalism Values at The Poynter Institute and the Director of the Jane Prindle Institute for Ethics at DePauw University.

Here’s what he wrote:

If one uses a common understanding of plagiarism — using the specific words or nearly exact thoughts of someone else and claiming them as your original writing or thoughts — then Norton’s use of this quote falls into that category.

My guess is that many politicians have used a variation of this phrase over the years to capture an ideological position about the role of government in our society. If Norton had just taken the broad concept and stated it in her own words, she might have been OK. For instance, if she said something like, “A government that gives can take. We should be wary of big government that promises too much and makes us pay back all we receive,” she would have made her point (albeit with a less resounding quote) and avoided the plagiarism trap.

Given her use of the exact wording, Norton should have attributed the phrase to Ford (assuming he was the originator of the phrase and didn’t borrow it himself from someone else). 

If a journalist used this same exact phrase without attribution, I would want to know how it happened. I would ask the journalist how and why she/he used that phrase and why it wasn’t attributed. I would also check other work produced by that journalist to see if there are other problems with attribution. I would discipline the journalist based on the extent and reason for the failure in this case and whether the journalist has a history of plagiarism. That discipline could range from a serious reprimand to a suspension to dismissal.

In this case, I would ask Norton some questions. How did this happen? Did you write this speech? If so, where did you get that line? If not, who wrote the speech and/or that line? Perhaps one of her speech writers did this. Norton, as the person who used the words is still primarily responsible, of course. I would also do some plagiarism checking of her other speeches to see if this is a recurring problem.

I made certain that Steele saw that Norton’s words weren’t exactly the same as Ford’s.

“Norton’s words are very, very close to the exact wording of the Ford quote and her expression of this thought is almost verbatim to Ford’s expression,” he wrote back.  “Norton should have attributed the statement to Ford. By not doing so, she claimed it as her original thought. That’s wrong.”

Even if you don’t agree with Steele, you’d still want to hear more from Norton about the Ford quote, given that she wants to be Colorado’s U.S. Senator.

Reporters should follow up with her, along the lines Steele suggests: How did this happen? Has it happened before? What have you done to stop it from happening again?

A politician can commit plagiarism and be forgiven, perhaps more easily than a professional writer. Look at Joe Biden. But it’s up to reporters to take Norton’s transgression much more seriously. Get all the facts on the table, and let us decide.

Needless to say, interviews are much more fun and useful if reporters try to correct candidates, repeatedly if necessary, if they have their facts mixed up.

So you have to appreciate Cynthia Hessin’s discussion with Scott McInnis on a special edition of Colorado State of Mind March 11. (Colorado State of Mind airs Fridays at 7:30 p.m. on Rocky Mountain PBS, Channel 6.)

On the show, McInnis said that Colorado’s economy is in bad shape and that the “wrong thing to do” is raise taxes. He said he opposed the “tax increases” passed this session by the lawmakers. Hessin made McInnis explain why he thought they were “tax increases.”

Hessin (at 13:50): To be clear, as a matter of procedure, these are lifting exemptions that these companies had, as opposed to imposing new taxes.

McInnis: No, these are new taxes. Now anytime you move money from the private marketplace to the government, that’s a tax increase.

Hessin: So you’re talking movement of money.

McInnis: They paint a pretty face on it. They like to say, well, it’s a loophole. We’re closing a loophole. Or we’re taxing the rich.

Hessin: By letter of law, that is what they’re doing, right?

McInnis: No it’s not. The way you define it, I think they are all tax increases. They are taking jobs out of the private marketplace to protect jobs in government. That’s exactly what’s happening with those 13 bills.

Hessin’s multiple follow-up not only makes for an interesting interview, but it also forced McInnis to clarify his position on the matter. In fact, Hessin was on solid ground here in describing the legislature’s actions as “lifting exemptions” rather than imposing “new taxes.” That is, if you accept a related decision by the Colorado Supreme Court.

Earlier in this interview, however, Hessin could have pressed McInnis harder, and also had the facts on her side.

McInnis said Colorado’s new oil-and-gas regulations have wounded Colorado’s economy, resulting in “thousands of jobs” leaving the state. He said Colorado’s oil-and-gas jobs moved to Pennsylvania, Texas, Wyoming, and Kentucky.

McInnis said: “The impact [of the oil and gas regulations] to the state as a whole was severe. We’ve lost a lot of jobs. We’ve lost thousands of jobs. These are 80,000-dollar-a-year jobs. The natural gas companies have left in groves. Now, you still have Encana and Williams and others that still have intense capital investment in the ground.  If you went to Grand Junction right now, you’d see 20 rigs sitting in storage yards. I mean, it’s had a huge impact.”

It’s now well-established that Colorado’s new oil-and-gas regulations cannot be blamed any job losses, much less “thousands of jobs,” as McInnis asserts, even though the oil industry has been making this assertion since before the regulations were passed. Hessin should have called McInnis on this.

We’ll be seeing more candidate interviews as the election gets closer…-and candidate profiles. The more critical questioning and reporting the better.