This may be one of those things. I'm not a newsroom professional, but I am an active consumer of news, particularly in this very interesting election season, so I am going to go way out on a limb here and theorize that approximately 90% of the standard campaign news articles produced by the major newspapers in the past month have been almost completely duplicative of each other. All the facts are there, in more or less the same order, with more or less the same quotes. From a consumer's perspective how much does it really matter whether the byline on a standard campaign story is from an employee of the individual newspaper? Or is that more to do with the institutional ego of the newspaper? If it is, we need to get over that, fast.

Imagine the state of New Hampshire during the week before its primary, a classic example of journalistic oversupply. Reporters who were not from New Hampshire and not from national news organizations swarmed into every diner in every small town, followed the candidates everywhere they traveled, and I'm guessing at least some really struggled to write something substantially different from what the rest of the pack was writing. Why? What a waste of energy and talent, and, frankly, what an irritant to the people of New Hampshire.

Let's think about redeploying those resources more intelligently. Obviously we still need campaign coverage, and that coverage will still happen through national news organizations and the largest newspapers, but I do believe we will benefit from the streamlining that's starting to occur. What we need less of, as any consumer will tell you if you ask, is slavish coverage of poll numbers and obsession with campaign gaffes and missteps, and that's what I hope we'll get less of as news organizations pull back. (Yes, there are political junkies who thrive on this stuff, but there are also more comprehensive sources for it than most local newspapers.) What we need more of is smart analysis of issues and positions, and that's where I'm suggesting we redeploy our coverage resources.

Here's just one example: All three candidates in the past couple of weeks have put forward proposals for addressing the subprime mortgage/housing crisis. They're all very different. Many newspapers have probably done a side-by-side comparison sidebar summarizing each position, but how many have taken that one step further and started to analyze what each proposal would mean to the local community? The outcomes of each in Baltimore or Camden, N.J., will probably be very different than the outcomes in, say, San Francisco. (Just a guess.) As news organizations we have a key role to play in preserving our democracy, and that role is to educate our community on the workings of its government and how those working will affect local citizens. Here's a chance to put our limited money where our mouths should be.

So I say being forced to cut back on the quantity of redundant, non-illuminating campaign coverage is a good thing, and I hope newspapers will take the opportunity to redeploy those resources to improving the quality and relevance of the coverage they do provide. Plenty of room out here on this limb for anyone who wants to join me.