Talk:Newspaper endorsements in the 2011 Canadian federal election

Qualifications

A problem with this type of article is that it is subjective as to what qualifies. It's interesting to see where editorial board endorsements fall, but not all publications deliver those. The NOW Magazine and Maclean's endorsements are therefore questionable, because they are opinions in by-lined columns by people who happen to be editors. That's a bit of a grey area since magazines, unlike newspapers, don't traditionally have editorial board positions. If we are going to keep magazines in an article entitled 'newspaper endorsements', it might at least be sensible to split them into a separate section and clarify what is meant by an endorsement in their cases. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.33.43.49 (talk • contribs) 12:50, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

I think if the editorial board or editor make an endorsement it should be included here as long as the newspaper as an entity hasn't made a separate recommendation. If no one disagrees, I will add Andrew Coyne's /Mcleans recommendation. Who deleted it without comment? Eb.eric (talk) 23:06, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

There could also be a page like this, solving the problem: Endorsements_in_the_Canadian_federal_election,_2006 Eb.eric (talk) 23:09, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Toronto Star

The Toronto Star ran a companion piece to their endorsement entitled "But vote strategically" where they urged some of their readers to vote Liberal. I think there should be a note of that on their entry. http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/983380 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.247.194.142 (talk) 00:44, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Ottawa Citizen

The issue is that the Ottawa Citizen has written *2* editorials, one endorsing a Tory majority (http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/decision-canada/case+Tory+majority/4702051/story.html), and one endorsing individual politicians riding-by-riding (http://www.ottawacitizen.com/opinion/Editorial+board+election+endorsements/4673927/story.html), not all Tories. I have added the first twice, and it has been deleted twice, by 117Avenue, on the grounds that "we" are only looking for the riding-by-riding endorsements.

I have no desire to get into an edit war, but I would note that the Ottawa Citizen is unusual in that it typically endorses a party, and then individual candidates in ridings in the Ottawa area. In 2008, Wikipedia provided the overall endorsement (of the Tories). Simply for the purposes of consistency I think it should be included this time. Also, it's not inconsistent to endorse a Tory majority with the caveat that you also support a few NDP or Liberal MPs locally. Why not provide both?

Certainly most of the editorials listed endorse a Tory majority or minority, and don't go into riding-by-riding endorsements. So if "we" are looking for riding-by-riding editorials, then we would have to delete most of the list, since most papers don't do that. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.26.95.196 (talk) 01:22, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Clarification: I did not mean we are looking for the riding-by-riding endorsements, we are looking for the editorial board's endorsement, as mentioned above by Eb.eric, both "editorial board" and "endorsement" are key words. The story entitled "The case for a Tory majority" provides a list of the benefits of a Tory majority, and ends with the statement "we can certainly endorse a return to political stability". The story entitled "Editorial board election endorsements" explicitly states it is written by a number of editors, and that they endorse those candidates, which is what we are looking for. 117Avenue (talk) 01:39, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your clarification, but I remain unconvinced. Firstly, as I wrote above, in the 2008 endorsements article on Wikipedia, there is a link to a similar Ottawa Citizen editorial, endorsing the Tories (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Newspaper_endorsements_in_the_Canadian_federal_election,_2011), rather than the 2008 riding-by-riding editorial. Secondly, I am unclear on the policy re including only editorials written by boards (multiple people). If that's the case, the Maclean's Liberal endorsement should be deleted, because that's only Andrew Coyne's column, and it's not much of an endorsement. Also, we can't conclude that the Ottawa Citizen editorial I added wasn't written by multiple people (the same Editorial Board that the riding-by-riding editorial refers to). Most of the editorials listed here do not refer to "editorial boards" explicitly, though we have assumed that's what they are. And lastly, I do not think you can infer from the last sentence of the editorial that it is somehow not an endorsement of the Tories; as the title says it's the "Case for a Tory Majority." Anyhow, I hope this clarifies my concerns. Thank you for reading.