Peter Schorsch
FLORIDA TODAY executive editor Bob Gabordi has been a study in contrasts since first coming to the Sunshine State in 2005.
That’s when he took over the editing reins of the Tallahassee Democrat after Gannett bought the paper from the now-defunct Knight Ridder.
There, the now four-time winner of the Gannett President’s Ring Award, for example, “helped create Move.Tallahassee.com to better engage readers around health & fitness issues.”
(Or as Adam Weinstein, a former Democrat employee and now one of his fiercest critics, once wrote for Context Florida: Gabordi enjoyed “live-blogging his walking-laps around Lake Ella with the town’s ‘movers and shakers.’ ”)
In any case, OK, great idea. We all need more exercise.
But he also raised eyebrows inside his own shop when he ordered the renovation of the newsroom’s restrooms to include shower stalls.
As the late, great Democrat columnist Gerald Ensley wrote in 2015 after Gabordi departed, the editor “wanted a place to shower after taking his lunchtime walks.”
From a PR perspective, that’s one step forward, one step back.
So it is with Gabordi at FLORIDA TODAY.
One step forward: The end of publishing mugshots.
One (stupid) step back: The end of political endorsements in local races.
Earlier this month, Gabordi wrote that FT will no longer publish a gallery of photographs of people arrested.
Acknowledging that abandoning so-called mugshot journalism will likely cost FT clicks and web traffic, Gabordi said the “decision to drop the mugshot galleries is meant to add more fairness to the process.”
“We want the FLORIDA TODAY brand to stand for something more than the parading across your digital screens photographs of human beings at their lowest life moments,” states Gabordi.
Florida Politics has long advocated for an end to mugshot journalism, even going so far as to confront Tampa Bay Times publisher Paul Tash about why such a venerated newspaper as his engages in the practice.
Kudos to Gabordi for taking a strong, albeit overdue, stand on this issue.
That’s the step forward for Gabordi, now for the step back.
Last month, Gabordi declared that the newspaper will no longer make political endorsements.
“We don’t want to contribute to the political polarization, and it is clear endorsements can do that,” Gabordi contends.
Gabordi writes about how “many people insisted” FT was biased in favor of Barack Obama, even though the editorial page endorsed Mitt Romney. That’s a straw (newspaper)man comparison because what those people were mostly likely referring to was the newspaper’s OVERALL coverage, not its editorial stances.
Even if that’s not the case, Gabordi may have a point that there really is no upside in a local newspaper endorsing a presidential candidate.
As a political consultant for more than 20 years, I can’t remember one instance of a voter making their decision about who should be president based on what the local newspaper opined. As our Jim Rosica wrote back in his Scripps/Tribune days: “The more attention a race gets, the more minds are made up and the less important endorsements are.”
Nor do presidential candidates really care if they are endorsed by a newspaper that does not include the words “New York” in its masthead.
But as relatively meaningless as they are in a presidential campaign, newspaper endorsements can be a critical factor in a down-ballot race.
In local elections, such as for judge or school board, a recommendation from the editorial board can be the turning-point in a campaign. And, for the most part, those races are non-partisan and therefore an endorsement in them would not lead to an exacerbation of the partisan divide, as Gabordi fears.
A newspaper’s endorsement is one of the leading methods for the Fourth Estate to hold politicians directly accountable. Solid reporting comes first, but the real impact may not be felt until an editorial puts it all in context.
Now, at least in Brevard, local candidates have less reason to, um, fear the FLORIDA TODAY.
They don’t have to prep for their sit downs with the editorial board — the kind of meetings which nearly every candidate I’ve ever worked with takes more seriously than almost any other moment on the campaign trail.
Politicians don’t have to worry, if they do something particularly bone-headed, being called out by Gabordi and Co. Incumbents don’t have to worry, if they lose touch with their constituents, about a challenger receiving a coveted endorsement that tells voters it’s time for a change.
Even if you accept Gabordi’s rationale for dropping endorsements, it’s inexplicable why he as a publisher is unilaterally disarming.
So kudos, Mr. Gabordi, for doing away with the mugshots on the FLORIDA TODAY’s website, but it’s a mistake to de-fang your newspaper by eliminating candidate endorsements.
