Political operatives Democrat political operatives will want the Argus-Dispatch estimating their next event
If you were anywhere near a newspaper rack yesterday you might have noticed that Bernie Sanders was in town on Sunday. Both the Quad Cities Times (QCT) and the Argus-Dispatch (A-D) gave old Bolshevik Bernie front page coverage with large color pictures. Note the side by side below. Both articles began above the fold. We adapted the pages to fit the scanner platen and in order to show the mastheads.
We expected the splash but we did not expect the disparity in crowd estimates between the two reports.
In the first paragraph the A-D reporter Jonathan Turner writes that the crowd was “about 2500.” Long time QCT political reporter Ed Tibbetts writes also in the first paragraph, that Sanders “drew hundreds of people.” Both statements were repeated in the on-line versions of the stories.
So who was right? Not being as familiar with Turner’s estimating integrity, and no photographic evidence from the A-D to back it up we have to go with the QCT. The smaller picture shown on the QCT front page is a crowd shot and we presume an attempt to encompass a lot of it. Going online where the picture also appears and blowing it up in order to make head counting by group as discernible as possible, then doubling our count estimate in the picture and then adding 50% more in order to take into account those off camera, we generously estimate maybe a thousand, and that is very generous based on the pictures available. Turner’s estimate is two and one-half times that. Having observed Tibbetts’ reports over the years at scores of such events and that he is cable of saying “a thousand or more” or “at least a thousand” if there were more than “hundreds” we suggest that the A-D report is a big puff piece.
R Mall
