Solid information − not polls, vibes or weasel words

Dear Reader,

I hope you’ve read our coverage of this week’s presidential debate. As is our custom, we asked scholars – in this case, one an expert on race, the other an expert on debates – to each write a 400-word analysis of what they saw and heard. The goal: to provide you with a deeper level of understanding than your average news story. 

That is what we aim to do every day here with The Conversation’s politics coverage: to use the unparalleled access we have to academics to produce deeply researched analysis of the news – on a deadline. 

But there’s more to our coverage than that.

I recently sent a list to my colleagues here at The Conversation of clichés and what I call “weasel words” commonly used in campaign reporting. You know, words like “punted” and “pivoted,” two euphemisms used when a candidate doesn’t want to answer a question: “Candidate Mary Smith punted when asked whether she supported cutting Social Security, and pivoted to the threat she said her opponent represented.”

We avoid that kind of euphemizing in our election coverage, where candidate Mary Smith would have “refused to answer the question and changed the subject.”  The British writer George Orwell is my hero and inspiration when I think about covering politics. In his great essay “Politics and the English Language,” he wrote, “Political language … is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

What we give you at The Conversation is the opposite of pure wind. Our election coverage doesn’t focus on presidential polls, which really aren’t news at all – they’re just tabulations of what some people say they might do. Nothing has actually happened. We don’t tell you what a candidate should say, or must do, to gain advantage. That’s not news, either.

Instead, we give you solid information to help you evaluate the candidates and the issues on the ballot.

Right now, we’re in the process of editing and publishing stories looking at the records of the presidential candidates on everything from health care to LGBTQ rights, immigration and labor issues. Journalism doesn’t get more concrete than that. Orwell argues against the use of overused metaphors and similes not just because they obscure meaning. He says, “If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration.”

You could say the same spirit animates our politics coverage – the desire to present you with clear thinking. To us, that’s the necessary first step toward a political culture revitalized by facts, which themselves then lead to informed judgments. I hope you will support us on what is, really, this noble mission – which Orwell would probably just have us call “a good idea.”

This good idea is made possible by the support of readers like you. So please help out as we launch our weeklong September drive today.  While we welcome a one-time gift in any amount, your monthly support will be especially helpful to get us through Election Day and beyond.

Our politics desk has been working intensively and will continue to do so well past Election Day so that you have truth, verified history and thoughtful analysis on your side as you navigate what lies ahead.

With thanks,

Naomi Schalit
Senior Politics and Democracy Editor

The Conversation U.S.