No More Elections on NBC... Let's Turn to the Web!

Carolyn Menyes
c.menyes@gmail.com
@athousandmph

It appears that two weeks out of the 2012 election, the journalists at NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams are just as sick of election coverage as the average viewer. In a week's worth of shows, there were very few stories about President (and President-elect) Obama at all. This could be due to more pressing news stories: General Petraeus' sex scandal, the tension between Gaza and Israel, the impending doom of Black Friday...


But, I can't sit in silence and write nothing about politics! So, I turned to the @NBCPolitics Twitter feed to find some story about the election. We're only two weeks away from the biggest news story of the year! There had to be some follow-up stories about the election.

I found two. NBC journalists must be REALLY sick of the elections.

The first story was an interesting take on the election and a smaller story. A Florida congressman backed by the Tea Party refused to concede the race to his democrat challenger and demanded a recount. The recount was done, Congressman Allen West still lost, but has still claimed the race is not over.

I appreciated this story, albeit a little bizarre and uncomfortable for the people of Florida. But, generally, the idea of finding little interesting stories about this expands NBC Politics' reach. It's also a much more interesting spin on post-election coverage than the barrage of stories about which demographics of the country showed up and in what amounts.

We got that in another NBC story.

After a preacher lectured that Christians did not come out and vote in the election, NBC Politics fact-checked him. In this article, NBC proved the preacher wrong by looking at the evangelical vote in key swing states, including Ohio, and their turnout in the South. The article proved that evangelicals voted and voted for Mitt Romney in similar numbers as they have in the last few presidential elections, so the pastor's claim was not valid.

I for one got sick of the demographics stories a day after the election, though I do find them interesting in some regards. Just find another post-election story for once!