The Best of the ’08 Campaign II: Best Local Press Coverage—By Scott Horton (Harper's Magazine)
As the former mayor of Wasilla got the Republican vice presidential nod, however, I took to reading the Anchorage Daily News most mornings, often clipping and circulating its articles to journalist and blogger friends. What I discovered was very impressive. ADN was indispensable to understanding the curious world of Alaska politics.
The reporting in ADN helped answer a critical question: can local papers make a meaningful contribution to presidential election coverage? In an earlier series of posts, I have discussed the local papers of one state which are not bad, but actually appalling. They have deteriorated that state’s political culture. wh state wh paper is that? But ADN provides a counter-example. It shows what a local paper with limited resources and reach can do, not only for its immediate readership, but for the country as a whole.
In the 2008 presidential campaign, no local paper made a stronger contribution to our understanding of the presidential campaign. In fact I am tempted to put the Anchorage Daily News in head-on competition with industry leaders such as The New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal. The ADN took advantage of its position as the principal newspaper of Alaska and offered Americans a deep glance into the problems and scandals that affect the state’s politics. It was prepared to expose the sores that a less rigorously professional paper would happily have covered up in the interests of parochialism. And it was unflinching but also rigorously fair in its coverage of and editorializing on Alaska’s native daughter, Sarah Palin.
Here are some of the pieces—both original reporting and opinion—that lead me to cite the Anchorage Daily News as the best local newspaper in campaign 2008 coverage:

• Michael Carey, “Palin Losing Friends on the Home Front”
• Troopergate Video: “Sarah Palin Promises Transparency in the Troopergate Probe, Turns to Secrecy as She Joins the McCain Campaign”
• “Palin Vindicated?”
• Dan Joling, “Parnell to Battle Young in Alaska Republican Primary”
• Martha Mendoza, “Palin Foreign Experience Limited to Canada”
• “Palin’s Stall: The Governor is Stonewalling the Troopergate Investigation”