news-record.com

A reporter’s life is full of challenges. The election is presenting its own set of problems, as we try to give voters what they need to know about the candidates.

We make every attempt to treat candidates the same. But it is a difficult job.

Here are two interesting dilemmas that have presented themselves so far.

What do you do with a candidate who has a criminal record?

Do residents need or want to know about every motor vehicle violation? Do you only report felonies? Do you only report crimes for which they have been convicted?

In the case of Jorge Cornell – where part of his campaign has been to discuss crimes for which he has been charged that were later thrown out by the court – everything went in. So other candidates (actually just two others – Ben Holder and Jeramy Reid) will get the same treatment.

Motor vehicle violations like speeding or having an expired registration didn't make the cut.

And how about this one: Should the newspaper correct a candidate’s misspelling?

It’s an interesting debate, considering two phone calls Scoop got this morning.

One was from a candidate asking to correct some typos in the questionnaire this candidate has turned into the newspaper. Another was from a separate candidate who wanted to make sure the News & Record wouldn’t clean up anyone’s spelling errors.

On Friday, our Web gurus posted candidate’s questions to the News & Record questionnaire as they were submitted – superfluous capitalization, misspellings and all. And on Monday the copy desk cleaned up the typos and other errors in Associated Press style, since regular folks don’t have editors.

But we’re curious what readers think. Do you want to know if your candidate can spell?