The Message

Around 5 a.m. the morning after another wacky election, 9News's Gary Shapiro expressed delight at being rid of political ads for the season. Smiling co-anchor Gregg Moss added that viewers should expect a lot more station promos in the days ahead.

Ordinarily, this prospect would have struck me as singularly unappealing. But although station executives were undoubtedly bummed at the thought of having to fill time with self-produced freebies, I couldn't have been happier. Bring on the promos!, I thought. Screen one after the other! They can be serious efforts or humorous ones featuring on-screen talent cavorting behind the scenes: I don't care! Anything but another screed ripping the character of Marilyn Musgrave or Dave Thomas, or the supposed "one-man suing machine" backing failed Amendment 34. Anything!

I got my wish -- and more. Not only did I start seeing extra promos on 9News and other outlets, but I was also greeted by familiar faces I hadn't seen much of for months. Dealin' Doug. Big Mike Naughton. Jake Jabs. Leslie Fishbein of Kacey Fine Furniture. Bonnie Murray, the woman from the O'Meara Ford commercials, whose voice sounds like sandpaper being dragged across a fender. Even the Shagman. Admittedly, I'd never been a real aficionado of their work before then. It pains me to confess that whenever they'd pop up on my screen, I'd blast them into oblivion. Suddenly, though, I had a newfound appreciation for their oeuvres. Sure, their pitches can be irritating -- but the content is usually more concerned with the wonderful services they provide than how their competitors are "wrong for Colorado." In other words, they espouse a positive message, just like Pete Coors used to before he had a political agenda. Get back to pimping suds, Pete, and all will be forgiven.

In the short run, the election's conclusion has improved my life immeasurably. For example, I no longer find my newspapers encased in "Pete Coors for Senate" bags, and neither am I subjected to rush-hour updates on KOA that end with the traffic reporter delivering slogans for campaigns that bought sponsorship time -- a practice that turns journalistic ethics on its head for a few extra bucks. Likewise, I'm relieved that the danger of hearing KHOW's Dan Caplis and Craig Silverman pretending to be George W. Bush and John Kerry has finally passed -- Ralph Nader's entire Colorado vote total can probably be traced to their November 1 mock debate -- and so has the motivation for Channel 4's Jim Benneman and Larry Green to transition into weather segments with banter along the lines of "I'd vote for this forecast." Finally, I'm thrilled that the most over-reported story of the year -- the theft of campaign signs from people's yards -- means about as much today as predictions that Bruce Springsteen could swing the election. Being the Boss ain't all it's cracked up to be.

This afterglow will wear off before long. Until then, I'm enjoying a post-election bounce.

The numbers game: Covering an election is a thankless task, in part because observers are constantly probing the media for evidence of prejudice. Overall, the Rocky Mountain News did a fine job tackling campaign 2004, but that didn't prevent critics from twice floating bias accusations leading up to the vote.

In late October, Gary Watson, the Denver Newspaper Guild's unit chair at the Rocky, circulated a note about Public Opinion Strategies, the polling organization used by the paper and its broadcasting partner, Channel 4. Specifically, Watson noted that POS's website, www.pos.org, identified it as "the largest Republican polling firm in the country." To Watson, this was particularly troubling given that the Rocky had urged employees not to make donations to political candidates to avoid the appearance of a conflict. Failing to identify POS's political affiliation in stories about polls, Watson stated, "is hypocritical and shows a lack of...good judgment."

Rocky editor/publisher/president John Temple responded to these charges with a brisk e-mail defending Lori Weigel, the POS representative with whom he'd contracted. After declaring that such accusations had never arisen in years when the paper had used canvassers Paul Talmey, Buie Seawell and Floyd Ciruli, all of whom have connections to the Democratic Party, Temple wrote, "Our condition for pollsters is that they not be working for a candidate or campaign in an election. That has not changed over the twelve years I've been here."

As for Weigel's accuracy in presidential prognostication, she estimated that President Bush had a 51-42 percent lead over John Kerry in Colorado the weekend before the election. That's two points wider than the margin posited during the same period by the Denver Post's firm, Mason-Dixon Polling & Research, which describes itself as independent. The final tally, approximately 53-46 percent, matched Mason-Dixon's seven-point spread, but POS had the general idea. That's more than can be said about many exit-pollers across the nation, who appear to have sucked on a bipartisan basis.