A few weeks ago I shared some thoughts about how paid reporters could more usefully cover the Presidential race. I got some thoughtful responses from reporters. Instead of ranting, I've decided to praise, and each week for the next two months I'm going to pick out one or two articles that represent great political reporting.

These are the standards of judgment:
(1) Does the article provide information that is helpful to me, as a citizen, in deciding which candidate to support?
(2) Is it interesting?
(3) Does it treat issues as a matter of politics or policy?

This article from this morning stood out:
When Fuel and Politics Mix

It compares the candidates positions on fuel. Its about something very important to all of us right now, and it gives us the capacity to compare candidates. And fuel is interesting wherever you are. (I'm in Bosnia, where the taxi prices have doubled since I was here 6 months ago.)

This article starts out strongly communicating importance:

As oil prices flirt with record highs, hovering around $95 a barrel on Tuesday, the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates are offering few quick fixes but profoundly different long-term approaches to energy policy.

Over the next decade or two, the differences could have a major effect on billions of dollars in government spending, on the relative prices of gasoline versus renewable fuels and on the efficiency of American cars and trucks.

(They could also have a major effect on the environment, needless to say.) It does not then immediately try to tell me, the reader, that the reason this is important is because it impacts electability.

I really like how the article is framed; its telling me about differences, not strategic differences. Last week the Times ran a story on immigration, but it wasn't about the candidate differences on immigration, it was about immigration as a political issue. Even the nuggets of useful citizen facts were lost in the framing of "is this good politics."

What is it missing?

I wish it had done a little more with the distance between the ethanol vote and the ethanol science, talked about renewed interest in nuclear fuel, etc.

I wish it had more about the candidates voting records on these issues.

It covers remarkably few candidates. Most citizens who are deciding want to know about Richardson as well as Romney, Huckabee as well as McCain, etc. A line on each of them would only help, even if that line is "indistinguishable from x," or "undefined" or "no record."

I wish it had asked unattached experts about the differences in policies.

But generally, its the kind of reporting we need. With this kind of frame, the entire debate moves forward in the right way. Well done, Edmund R. Andrews!