What the caucus-goers read

As anyone who watches CNN knows, large mainstream media outlets will tell you about the presidential campaigns until your ears bleed. Meanwhile, small local media will print what presidential news they have, but will happily stick to covering this year's toy drive if they have to. They may not have much news to print, but to their credit, small weeklies know their communities well. With that in mind, Barack Obama's string of interviews with small Iowa weeklies makes a lot of sense. The pressure is on for all of the democratic candidates to leave a lasting impression on people in Iowa, which should mean more than just showing up in a small town for a few photo-ops. Most of the towns the candidates are visiting are probably rarely mentioned in larger statewide papers; their residents most likely see the local weeklies as the most legitimate news source about what's going on in their community. If a town of only a few thousand people is worth visiting in the first place, speaking with its local paper should certainly be a priority; if it's worth going to the local tailgate, or showing up for the community toy drive, it's worth speaking to the paper that would cover those events regardless of who was in attendance.