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York, Pennsylvania has always been an offbeat kind of newspaper town, so perhaps it is fitting that, in an unusual deal, the owners of York's two dailies recently merged properties. There are strategic reasons for this transaction. The two newspapers that serve the region, which are now in a joint operating agreement (JOA), are the "Daily Record," a morning paper with 46,500 weekday circulation, and the "York Dispatch," with 37,300 weekday and 93,200 Sunday circulation. Another unusual fact about York is that for a long time it was perhaps the only U.S. city to have an independently owned Sunday newspaper, the "York Sunday News." York had three newspaper ownerships, the two weekday dailies and an independent Sunday. When the two newspapers entered into the JOA, MediaNews received an option to buy the "Daily Record," which became the basis for the recent transaction. In effect, the option was insurance against the time when the afternoon syndrome might begin to erode the Dispatch's circulation. Indeed, over the last five years the Dispatch's circulation has declined more than 7 percent while the Record's has gained nearly 7 percent. Thus, the transaction brought MediaNews what it probably wanted all along, control of a seven-day morning newspaper.

This article examines why editorial pages keep publishing newspaper endorsements of presidential candidates even though few voters are being swayed by these endorsements. The impact of endorsement on national or even regional elections--contests in which candidates are well-known among voters--is negligible. A Pew Center for the People & the Press study released in January 2004, which measured media influences on voters during the 2004 presidential campaign, concluded that newspaper endorsements are also less influential than four years ago, and they dissuade as many U.S. citizens as they persuade. But when the hometown newspaper is the primary source of preelection information for a particular race, its endorsement can and does sway voters--positively and negatively. In 2000, Editor & Publisher magazine found that 70 percent of papers and 96 percent with circulations of 200,000 or more that responded to a survey were likely to make a presidential endorsement. Not among this group are the nation's two largest newspapers--USA Today and the Wall Street Journal. Neither endorses candidates of any kind. The founder of the first thinks endorsements are demeaning to readers, and the second views principles as more important than politicians.

In the wake of Jayson Blair, Jack Kelley and numerous other journalists who were into instances of fabrication and plagiarism, the U.S. newspapers are scrutinizing their operations and stiffening their defenses against ethical lapses. With dismaying regularity, papers across the country are realizing that they have been had by cheating reporters. Jayson Blair's bamboozling of the "New York Times," the most headline-grabbing example, is among the reasons the industry has since heard of sin after sin after sin. As each new case chipped away at the news industry's already fragile credibility, most newsroom leaders this year heard a call to action. Knowing that wiping out plagiarism and fabrication is pretty much impossible, editors started having at it just the same, tightening ethics policies, having heart-to-heart talks with their staff, monitoring corrections, tracking expense reports and learning about software that detects plagiarism. To set the stage for solid editing, newsrooms might have to rethink the traditional editor-to-reporter ratio. Often, top editors say, there are so many reporters per supervisor that an editor just does not have enough time in the day to give copy the attention it deserves, let alone know exactly what each reporter is up to. INSET: PLAYING DEFENSE.