Kerry doing it right

I don't subscribe to the Arizona Daily Sun no more, but I found this remarkable. (Via Atrios)

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. - The Arizona Daily Sun characterized John Kerry's Sunday night rally in Heritage Square as "practically the second coming" and devoted its entire Monday front page to the blessed event.

Stories examined the opinions of undecided voters in the crowd, Teresa Heinz Kerry's speech, Indian issues and, for balance, protesters supporting President Bush.

You can't buy that kind of publicity. And that, in large measure, was the point of the Democratic presidential nominee's 4,971-mile trip from Boston to Oregon by bus and train, which ended on Friday.

A recent study by the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University found that, on a cost-per-vote basis, it's more effective to send a presidential candidate into smaller media markets than to buy advertising in major television markets. While millions of eyeballs see 30-second spots, local visits are better at moving voters, the research found.

Forget good campaigning, this is brilliant to get coverage like that from the Sun.

You may not realize, but Flagstaff is a fairly liberal community with a disgustingly conservative newspaper. My family stopped subscribing to the Daily Sun after they stopped printing Doonesbury because they needed "balance in an election year." This from a paper whose idea of a left-wing columnist is Nat Hentoff. (They've recently added Doonesbury back after enough people were disgusted by them)

But for Kerry to get this coverage is great. Sure Flagstaff isn't much on the national scale. It's a town of about 50,000 people (I believe) and it's only that high 'cos it's got a university, but you know the saying, 50,000 people here, 50,000 people there and pretty soon you've got a constitiency. Okay, so that's not really a saying per se, but - what was my point again?