Campaign news in the subjunctive isn't really news

These days, when you read anything about the next stop on the presidential primary local, as in this passage, even from a sharp observer like Michael Tomasky, you should run for the hills or head for the nearest bookie to plunk your money on a Giuliani loss: "It's also suddenly plausible that Rudy Giuliani, who I still think may be the party's strongest candidate for November, could elbow his way back into this thing. He's counting on a win in Florida, which votes on January 29."
-- Tom Engelhardt, in his TomDispatch posting of 20 January

A segue from my last post into this one, which offers a link to a Tomgram post by Jay Rosen titled The Beast Without a Brain: Why Horse Race Journalism Works for Journalists and Fails Us. Here's a teaser:

Who's-gonna-win is portable, reusable from cycle to cycle, and easily learned by newcomers to the press pack. Journalists believe it brings readers to the page and eyeballs to the screen. It "works" regardless of who the candidates are, or where the nation is in historical time. No expertise is actually needed to operate it. In that sense, it is economical. (And when everyone gets the winner wrong the "surprise" becomes a good story for a few days.) Who's going to win -- and what's their strategy -- plays well on television, because it generates an endless series of puzzles toward which journalists can gesture as they display their savviness, which is the unofficial religion of the mainstream press.

But the biggest advantage of horse-race journalism is that it permits reporters and pundits to "play up their detachment." Focusing on the race advertises the political innocence of the press because "who's gonna win?" is not an ideological question. By asking it you reaffirm that yours is not an ideological profession. This is experienced as pleasure by a lot of mainstream journalists. Ever noticed how spirits lift when the pundit roundtable turns from the Middle East or the looming recession to the horse race, and there's an opportunity for sizing up the candidates? To be manifestly agenda-less is journalistic bliss. Of course, since trying to get ahead of the voters can affect how voters view the candidates, the innocence, too, is an illusion. But a potent one.

As an example of bringing "new knowledge into the system," Rosen cites Charlie Savage and the Boston Globe in this December 2007 article. (You can examine a particular issue across candidates, or a particular candidate across issues.)