Newspaper endorsements

So here’s an interesting question: what weight does a newspaper endorsement carry these days? The Columbus Dispatch today endorsed President Bush in this year’s election. I am deeply disappointed, not the least because of what I’ve heard from family members who are deeply involved in Ohio. This endorsement was a decision made by the publisher, John Wolfe, against the beliefs of many members of the paper’s editorial team. That this is the case can be read “through the lines” of the endorsement itself. I can’t find any evidence on the web that the main Cleveland paper, the Plain Dealer, has made an endorsement yet in the presidential race, but there, too, I have heard rumblings about owner pressure being brought to bear. So I return to this question: what weight does a newspaper endorsement carry these days? I hope to find out more about the “behind the scenes” pressures being brought to bear in Ohio. Anyone out there in the blogosphere have more light to shed on this? I’d like to believe that grassroots, decentralized media might have a useful counterbalancing force…