From Columbia Journalism Review: On a recent Thursday, journalist Sandra Fish was on the campus of Colorado State University in Pueblo giving a talk she’s been presenting around the state. Its title: “Tools for Journalists: Following the Colorado Money.” There’s a lot of money in politics to follow here, and during the campaign season, those dollars fund a lot of ads.
The state has one of the key Senate races in this fall’s midterm election, pitting Democratic incumbent Mark Udall against GOP challenger Cory Gardner and drawing heavy spending from outside groups on both sides. Meanwhile, incumbent Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper is in a close re-election campaign against Bob Beauprez, and the contest in the state’s 6th Congressional District, between Republican incumbent Mike Coffman and challenger Andrew Romanoff, is being watched as a marker of the Latino vote nationwide.
With so many high-profile races, and a red-blue divide that closely parallels the broader nationwide split, Colorado has become a key bellwether state. What that means on the ground, says Fish, who runs the blog COPolitics, is “a barrage of TV ads”—$43 million in ad buys in Colorado, she says, or almost 18 full days’ worth of commercials, as of August 15.
But with local-level ad buys widely available online for the first time since July 1 thanks to a 2012 FCC ruling, Fish sees journalistic opportunity, a chance to track how campaigns are targeting voters and where the money’s coming from. So far, though, a lack of consistency in file formats and reluctance by TV stations to clarify or expand on information has likely deterred most mainstream reporters at big newspapers or TV stations from tackling the beat.
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