5 questions on 5 issues: Adam Schwarze, Republican candidate for US Senate

You know a story is thin when the headline does more work than the article. "5 questions on 5 issues" and then not one answer makes it into the piece. We get the format, we get the candidate's name, we get the station's call letters twice. What we don't get is a single word Adam Schwarze actually said about inflation, the border, or anything else Minnesota voters supposedly told KSTP mattered to them.

That's not a knock on Schwarze specifically. It's a knock on how local outlets treat Senate races that aren't already national spectacles. Somewhere there's a video or a transcript with real answers, and instead the wire version strips it down to a press-release skeleton. If voters in Minnesota are trying to figure out who represents them on the issues that hit their own paychecks and communities, a story that tells them nothing except that a survey happened isn't journalism, it's a placeholder.

We'd rather see the actual five answers than the fact that five questions were asked. Republicans running in these overlooked Senate races already fight an uphill battle for coverage next to the marquee contests. When the coverage that does exist amounts to a stub, it doesn't help voters and it doesn't help the candidate make his case either way. Give people the substance and let them judge it themselves. That's the whole point of asking the questions in the first place.