Thread by @PoliticoCharlie

Good read about Andrew Yang's rising fortunes.
politi.co/36vY3Ct

It’s a useful reminder of how far he’s come. For me, it’s also a cautionary tale about the perils of dismissing longshot candidates. (1)

Way back in Dec 2018, @natashakorecki filed a story about an Iowa event a bunch of 2020 candidates were expected to attend. She’s one of the best and most thorough reporters I’ve ever worked with; she noted that an unknown named @AndrewYang was supposed to be there as well. (2)

I’m a believer in brevity; laundry lists of names in stories don’t make for compelling reading. So I deleted Yang’s name from the final version. (3)

Coloring my judgment: In any given presidential election there are a gazillion candidates – many of them cranks who aren’t seriously running. (The FEC, for example, reports over 1,000 candidates have filed for 2020.) (4)

So after the story published, Natasha got a gracious, civil email from Yang, politely noting that he, too, planned to be in attendance. She forwarded the note, without comment, to the idiot who cut him out of the original story – me. (5)

I mention that Yang wrote a gracious email because we don’t get a lot of those. In a hyper-polarized and intensely tribal era of politics, every story is guaranteed to piss off someone. Frequently, the notes we get are angry, nasty, accusatory, etc. (6)

Candidates & comms folks provide a good bit of feedback, too. Many are under the impression that accusing us of bias or something worse will prove convincing. Or perhaps we’ll be intimidated by an in-your-face note or call. I pretty much ignore those notes just on principle. (7)

But I try to make a practice of responding to every reasonable, fair-minded criticism, and every thoughtful, civil note – like Yang’s. And I’m a believer that editors who screw up a reporter’s work should hold themselves accountable. (8)

So I wrote directly to Yang and fell on my sword. I told him exactly what happened, and that I was to blame. He writes back again, with another gracious note, and he provided a little more information about his campaign. (9)

Ten months later, he was in our office for an edit meeting – where he impressed. Now, as that @TrentSpiner story details, his campaign has more money than anyone ever would have guessed way back in 2018. (10)

Glad to see that, as dysfunctional as our system has become, there’s still room for earnest, hard-working longshot candidates. It’s not hard to see why his style is proving refreshing to many. And traffic from that story suggests people are very curious about him (11)

This thread wouldn’t be complete without a plug for our great and energetic reporter who is covering Yang closely, @EugeneDaniels2 (12)