I think the media has to continually remind itself, and I think we do but sometimes not well enough that we're not just an economic property.

We still write too many stories that are "state of the race" stories that are informed almost solely by what the polling shows and by what we're then deducing about who's up, who's down, and I'm just not sure that's very helpful to readers, it certainly doesn't elevate the debate and, and the problem is if you, if you cover these things, and I don't think the Times is particularly culpable, I think other news organizations are worse, if you cover them in an entirely "who's up, who's down" horse race way.

I can't speak for the news side 'cause I'm on the opinion side. But what I have noticed that the news side has done and, and to be really honest I think the news side pays too much attention to polls, but I think they're trying to restrain themselves by for instance there's a rubric called Poll Watch, um, that appears in a stream of a whole bunch of other political news where they can gather all that polling information for those people who really want it.

I remember going to a Trump rally in South Carolina, and it was really important and it was really interesting to talk to the people who'd shown up there because they were not caricatures, and so often Trump voters, Trump supporters were being portrayed in the media, probably I'm guilty of it as well, as caricatures. Each of these people, and I talked to maybe a dozen of them, had a very particular reason why he or she was supporting Donald Trump , but these were not casual, inexplicable decisions.

If every four years in a presidential election, if you're a New Yorker or a Californian, and you realize that you are so much less important, that nobody is actually kind of targeting your needs because they're laser-focused on what will play in Florida and on what will play in Virginia.

Writers and reporters need to remind themselves they're not to be judged solely by the number of clicks or eyeballs on a given story, but there is this other value and this other important mission, and the key is balancing the two so that you stay alive long enough, whether you're an individual writer or whether you're a whole news organization, to keep doing what you're doing but that you don't get so driven by that that you forget that what you're supposed to be doing in a higher sense is informing people, is elevating the debate and not lowering it.

We've given people both in print and even more so on TV these enormous doses of Donald Trump because people are consuming enormous doses of Donald Trump. If we had gotten a signal that John Kasich got as big an audience, believe me, you would have seen a lot more of John Kasich so it's complicated who's to blame, the media or the people consuming the media.