By John McGrath

Ivor Shapiro has a more detailed take on this round's coverage of the Canadian election, specifically looking at how the media lived up to the lessons learned from the last election of 2006. Read the whole thing, but I liked this bit in particular:

First of all, as suggested by the Yaffe example, the Canadian op-ed sphere is healthier than ever, because the print column has been supplemented by the j-blog. The Star, for instance, added to its impressive range of print columnists by assigning veteran David Olive to blog with daily analysis of the campaign. Maclean’s offered its vast slate of columnists with blogs representing many shades of political opinion. Favourites of Carleton j-school chair and long-time political junkie Chris Waddell included the Globe's Jeffrey Simpson and the National Post’s John Ivison - but of course we could go on and on.

The trouble is, opinion was never the problem. The proliferation of printed and electronic commentary could, if anything, become a distraction from the glaring gaps that have been identified in election reporting. The question is not whether voters are exposed to enough opinions, but whether they are getting the facts. [Emphasis added.]

Clearly the press isn't solely responsible for Stéphane Dion's defeat last week, but for all the talk of how "complicated" and "hard to understand" the Green Shift was (and I don't think it was, really) how many journalists asked themselves if that represented a failure on their part?