Midterms: Morning Papers Part 1

Cable news critiques:

> Robert Bianco, USA Today: “One of the best products was CNN’s ‘balance of power’ graphic, an easy-to-understand bar that showed the status of the race for the House and the Senate at a glance. What’s more, it stayed on the air even during commercials, which were reduced to a picture-in-picture look…”

> Jeanne Jakle, San Antonio Express-News: “Cable’s news channels too were more successful with plain graphics showing the winners and losers. The checks and red-and-blue colors used by Fox News were much more effective, and less confusing, than the flashy electronic wall employed by CNN…”

> Robert Lloyd, Los Angeles Times: “Over at MSNBC, they seemed to be laughing a lot in a show of bipartisan insider hilarity, while the mood at CNN, with Wolf Blitzer and Jeff Greenfield contemplating their big ‘video wall’ was pointedly serious and thoughtful…”

> David Zurawik/Nick Madigan, Baltimore Sun: “Nothing on cable could compete with the depth of CNN, which seemed to have correspondents everywhere, two teams of analysts and three of the stronger anchors in Blitzer, Anderson Cooper and Lou Dobbs…”

> Jonathan Storm, Philadelphia Inquirer: “Fox and MSNBC had pundit panels, too, but CNN’s was the most politicized. Conservatives Bill Bennett and J.C. Watts sported red ties, liberals Carville and Paul Begala had blue, and Begala called Rush Limbaugh ‘a drug-addled gasbag…'”

> Doug Elfman, Chicago Sun-Times: “I know you totally ignore MSNBC, but it had the funnest co-anchors in Chris Matthews (streetwise guy, drawn to personalities not parties) and Keith Olbermann (quip-witted intellectual)…”