A good metric of just how far a story has resonated on the campaign trail is whether it ends up in the local news.
And I'm not just saying that because I am a local news reporter.
There is a great deal of campaign fodder that is loud and important to a relatively small group of people. If you read dedicated political reporting like this blog every day, you can probably find a scandal or a huge story just about every day. But very few of those "major stories" make it to the vast majority of people who vote.
That is why local news is a good metric for just how big a story has become. In order to pass the threshold of a local newscast a story will have had to reach a big enough level where we feel it will matter to the average viewer. In most cases the average viewer is the average voter.
This week the Mitt Romney campaign is dealing with such a story. A video of him at a private fundraiser has turned into a full blown story that was enough to make it into our 11pm newscast Tuesday night.
The Barack Obama campaign has had it's share of similar less than flattering news. His "you didn't build that" comment as an example, has made it into our newscast on several different occasions.
So when your are looking to sift through what is a big deal, and what is just a minor blip on the campaign radar, the 11pm news is a good start.
Speaking of which, here is my story on the video fallout from NBC12:
It's been posted on the internet for several months, now, but in just in the last 24 hours, it has become a major headache for Mitt Romney and his campaign. You've probably seen at least a portion of the video. It is grainy and it's hard to hear, but it's reverberation on the campaign trail is already loud and clear.
In the video, candidate Romney is seen off in the distance. He makes several claims Obama National Communications Director Brent Colburn argues he wouldn't have made if he knew a camera was rolling.
"That's another reason why we think people really need to pay attention," Colburn said.
The section that has gotten the most attention is a point the former governor made about people who don't pay income taxes. He said those 47% will never vote for him. Colburn argues that those 47% include a lot of people.
"Look these are people who that are out there working hard," he said. "They are contributing to society; they aren't put there looking for a government hand out."
Even Governor Bob McDonnell, a Romney supporter, argued this morning on national TV that he probably could've made his point better.
"I think what the governor was trying to say and he said he didn't say it right is what's being reported," he told Fox & Friends on the Fox News Channel.
That point is that the GOP believes more and more people are becoming dependent on government under President Obama. It is something his running mate Paul Ryan attempted to clarify Tuesday during a stop in Newport News.
"Government dependency has gone up, economic stagnation has persisted under the Obama administration's policies," he said. "The whole point he was trying to make is that we want to get people onto lives of self sufficiency."
read and see the rest of the story on NBC12.com
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