Washington Post Ombudsman: Paper's Coverage of Ron Paul Has Been "sparse"

Washington Post Ombudsman Patrick B. Pexton interrogates his employer's coverage of the presidential candidate, and (most helpfully of all), just cold counts up the articles. Excerpt:

Steven Ginsberg, The Post's national political editor, countered that Paul has "gotten every bit of the coverage he deserves. We covered him quite a bit over all our platforms…. We take him seriously."

The Post looks at several factors in assigning reporters to the GOP field, Ginsberg said, including national and state polling data, and the credibility and robustness of the candidate's campaign organization, as well as how much money he or she has raised.

Ginsberg said he has noticed Paul's uptick in recent polls, his good fundraising record and his stronger campaign team. He said that after Labor Day more coverage would be coming.

Still, The Post's coverage of Paul looks thin compared with its stories on Bachmann. In the past six months, The Post has published online or in print 34 staff-written stories plus 12 wire service stories on Bachmann, who has served not even five years in the House, and that doesn't count the blog posts about her on The Fix or Glenn Kessler's Fact Checker pieces. The Post published 19 staff-written stories on former House speaker Newt Gingrich in that time, plus one wire story and many blog posts. On Paul, a congressman for more than 20 years, who was No. 2 in fundraising after Romney in the last report, The Post has published just three full stories, a couple more that had large sections on him along with other candidates, two wire stories and The Fix blog posts.

Emphasis mine.

Reason on media coverage of Ron Paul here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. In November 2007, Nick Gillespie and I took to the pages of the Washington Post to write about "How to make sense of the Ron Paul revolution."