Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Four years later, college newspapers that once supported Obama abandon him

Many college newspapers that endorsed Barack Obama for president in 2008 are not supporting his election again this year, another indication that the Obama enthusiasm that swept across campuses four years ago has faded.
A review conducted by The Daily Caller of campus publications indicates that at least 53 papers newspapers that endorsed Obama in 2008 have yet to endorse his candidacy again as Election Day approaches. TheDC arrived at this number by looking at 89 known papers that supported Obama four years ago.
Ryan Weber, the editor of the Daily Illini at the University of Illinois, explained to his readers last week that the paper decided against endorsing a candidate in the election after supporting Democratic nominee John Kerry in 2004 and Obama in 2008.
“This decision does not come easily — some members of the editorial board opposed this decision; others supported it,” Weber wrote.
But don’t be fooled: most of these publications aren’t all backing Republican nominee Mitt Romney instead. Only one paper — The Daily Campus of Southern Methodist University — is supporting Romney in 2012 after supporting Obama in 2008.
“The economic situation four years ago was terrible, but the so-called recovery of the last four years has been mediocre at best,” the paper wrote in its endorsement of Romney in October. “President Obama, for all the well-deserved hype he received after his historic election in 2008, has failed to live up to the excitement.”
As TheDC reported Sunday, while a number of papers have abandoned him, Obama still appears to be winning more endorsements than Romney overall from college newspapers.
But Obama — who won nearly every endorsement made by college newspapers in 2008 — is not as popular on campus as he was four years ago.

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