Media must tell elections' real stories

"The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing." -- Socrates "Any fool can know. The point is to understand." -- Albert Einstein Once again, the polls were wrong. According to the Five Thirty-Eight average of national polls on Election Day, Democrat Kamala Harris should've won the popular vote by nearly 2 percentage points over Republican Donald Trump. Instead, Trump trounced Harris in every battleground state, taking the popular vote by more than 2 points (the exact opposite of the polls) and claiming the Electoral College by 86 votes, or 16 points. The whole national media apparatus once again missed what Trump and his campaign seemed to know instinctively, and last week's results make a good case for tossing all the old ways of covering presidential campaigns and starting from scratch. Most of the media -- the pollsters, pundits, anchors, and authors -- seemed to miss just how frustrated most of America had grown with inflation (despite other positive indicators in the economy), how disgusted red America had become with "wokeness," how disenchanted younger voters had grown with the establishment. The media picked up on it here and there, with some great stories scattered throughout the election cycle that a careful reader would've seen as doom for the Harris campaign, including stories about disillusionment among progressives over the current administration's support for Israel, apathy among many Black voters about Harris, and the persistent gap between the economy's actual performance and how people felt about the economy. But most of the banner headlines screamed about Trump's latest outlandish statement or which media outlet Harris sat down with or who was ahead in the polls or in fundraising. The same old bag, and America's getting tired of the same old bag. As it often does, Politico Magazine hit the nail on the head in its election postmortems. A week ago, the outlet posted a fascinating analysis of how voters' news sources played a role in the outcome of the election. The piece by Steven Waldman, president of Rebuild Local News and co-founder of Report for America, posited that election analyses ought to pay more attention to where voters get their news, along with voters' various demographic groups. The piece highlighted an NBC poll conducted while Democratic President Joe Biden remained in the race showing that, among voters who got most of their news from newspapers, Biden clobbered Trump 70% to 21%. But, among those who got most of their news from YouTube or Google and among those who don't follow political news, Trump led 55% to 39% and 53% to 27%, respectively. Other polls showed young people and Latinos most likely to get their news from social media, Waldman wrote, and exit polls showed Trump gaining ground this year among both of those groups. Two days later, Politico Magazine dissected the appeal of podcaster Joe Rogan and how he influences the politics of young men -- a huge part of Trump's winning coalition -- without frequently saying overtly political things. Instead, according to the piece by Politico's Calder McHugh, Rogan and other podcasters and YouTubers of his ilk amass huge followings by talking up a specific type of lifestyle, "a natural distrust of authority, a belief that most politicians are lying to them." It's not overtly conservative, in the classical sense, but more an iconoclast ideology, leading Rogan to endorse Vermont socialist-Democrat Bernie Sanders in 2020 and back Trump this year (both of those politicians appeared on Rogan's show, and McHugh suggested Rogan's endorsements were more about which politicians helped Rogan build his brand than any ideological allegiance). Rogan's millions of followers listen to him about politics because he speaks to them about the rest of their lives -- their frustrations and desires. Waldman's and McHugh's pieces suggested Democrats need to start playing more effectively in the YouTube/podcast space to reach the voters they need to continue building a coalition. But I took away the fact that the media needs to start paying more attention to the stories told in that space and the people listening to those stories to more accurately cover American sentiment leading up to Election Day. Pollsters ought to somehow find a way to reach the audience listening to Rogan and others similar to him to better capture voters' concerns and preferences. Pundits need to pay attention to what Rogan and the rest say and what Rogan's viewers/listeners say to him to better articulate the nation's mood. And news outlets need to interact with that space to be able to tell better stories about how voters feel, what they're concerned about, and where they're leaning politically in the lead-up to the election. Many news outlets already have podcasts, but they're mostly reproductions of their news shows or stories, talking overtly about the news of the day and politics. They might want to consider a more laid-back approach that talks about issues people care about -- those so-called "kitchen table" issues -- and encourage more interaction with readers/listeners/viewers to better understand how middle America feels. And, most importantly, as I've said numerous times, the big-time outlets need to get out of the Beltway and off the coasts and into the heartland of America more often. Then they might see what's really out there and better tell the real story of American politics. And they might get the forecast right. Justin A. Hinkley is publisher/editor of The Alpena (Michigan) News. He can be reached at jhinkley@TheAlpenaNews.com.