This year, for the first time in its history, the News Sentinel will not endorse a candidate in the presidential election.

The decision to abandon this practice was not an easy one.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is going to drop its political endorsements. It’s a momentuous change for a newspaper that for many decades prided itself on announcing from on high its judgement on who was the superior candidate in elections. The move was confirmed by editorial page editor David Haynes to national media writer Jim Romenesko.

Sources tell me the newspaper felt the heat of endorsing Republican Gov. Scott Walker in the bitterly contested recall election and decided it wasn’t worth it. The word is the newspaper will do no more endorsements unless the editors really feel like a candidate has crossed the line and they need to weigh in.

What, no editorial board endorsement for president? ...

We decided this year to stop endorsing in presidential elections. In local and state races, we can offer recommendations based, in part, on information, candidate access and issue familiarity that most of our readers don't have. That simply isn't the case with presidential elections. Readers have access to the same information we do.

Minnesotans will decide how to vote on this issue. As has been the case with legislative races and the Voter ID amendment, the Pioneer Press is not endorsing one way or another.

Some of you have asked when the American-Statesman will endorse a candidate in Tuesday’s presidential election, and the short answer is that we won’t be doing that.

What we will do instead is acknowledge that we have no special insight into the presidential election that readers can’t glean from their own attention to the news about the candidates. Their stance on the issues, their backgrounds and their performance on the debates have all been covered at length in the pages of this newspaper and elsewhere, and readers need only add their own values and concerns to the mix to make a decision.

The Dayton Daily News is among a growing number of newspapers that have made the decision not to endorse candidates or issues. There are two major reasons why we are not endorsing:

Most readers don’t want us to tell them how to vote. They’ve asked us to dig into the issues and races and provide all the information they need to make their own decision.
Some readers don’t trust our news reporting because they see endorsements as an indication of institutional bias. We want to prove to you that our news coverage is as fair and balanced as possible.

I know who the St. Paul Pioneer Press is going to endorse for President. And Senator. And the legislature.

No one.

In a rare but increasingly common industry move, the Pioneer Press has ditched political endorsements — at least for now. “We just wanted to do it this way, this year,” editor Mike Burbach says. “At this moment, it’s more comfortable for me.”

Burbach was the editorial page editor in 2010, but has since ascended to editor without giving up opinion-page responsibility. In other words, the PiPress can’t plausibly say, as the Strib does, that “our newsroom and editorial staff are separate.”

Beginning today, we will publish editorial endorsements of candidates in key local races in the Nov. 6 election. The endorsements reflect The Times-Picayune editorial board's view of which candidates will best serve the interests of our communities. We will also take positions on constitutional amendments and propositions voters will decide in this election. We will not make an endorsement in the presidential race. However, in the coming weeks Times-Picayune columnists Jarvis DeBerry and James Varney will be debating -- in the newspaper and on NOLA.com -- the pros and cons of President Barack Obama and his Republican challenger, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

The question arises every election season: Why does The Star Editorial Board endorse political candidates? It's a fair question, and one with multiple answers.

To start, it's worth noting that most newspapers offer endorsements on their opinion pages and have for many years. In putting forward our recommendations on whom we view to be the best candidates for local, state and federal offices, The Star is very much in the mainstream of American journalism. But endorsements are about far more than tradition. Endorsements fit with our daily mission of community leadership. That leadership includes listening to and providing a forum for diverse points of view, bringing people together in civil conversations and debate, and helping different segments of our community find ways to work together.

It also means taking a stand on key issues facing our city, region, state and, occasionally, our nation and world. In all those cases, we arrive at our editorial positions after completing relevant research, listening to knowledgeable people with differing viewpoints, and then deciding what we think is in the best interests of our community and state.

We take the same approach with political endorsements. We endorse in local, state and congressional offices after interviewing candidates, analyzing their positions on issues and monitoring how they've run their campaigns. We then try to determine which candidate in each race is most likely to lead effectively in office.

Because we're able to interview the great majority of the candidates and because several important state and local offices often don't command much attention, the Editorial Board is in a unique position to provide a public service through our recommendations.

One office, however, doesn't fit with the role we can best provide in endorsements -- and it happens to be the highest-profile race of all.

Americans have access to vast amounts of information on the major party candidates running for president. The Star offers extensive coverage of those candidates, the issues and debates on our website and in the newspaper. But the Editorial Board is not in a position to provide unique insight on the presidential candidates.

In the presidential race, we don't influence the outcome or change minds. But in state, local and congressional races, we offer insights that can help people make decisions. We come to know many of the candidates from years of covering them -- from talking with them face-to-face, from vetting them to a degree that aids voters.

In that light, we've asked ourselves whether it makes sense to continue to endorse a candidate in the presidential election. Does it fit with our mission? Does it serve the needs of our readers? We've concluded that it does not, and for those reasons, we will not issue an endorsement in this year's presidential race.

We will, as always, provide a wide range of opinion on the candidates and the key issues. We will continue to endorse in local, state and congressional races, for reasons outlined above.

Our primary mission is local. We'll stay focused there, where we believe our resources can help voters make choices that are in the best overall interest of Hoosiers.

We have a lot of elections in Alabama. We've had primaries and runoffs, municipal elections and some county elections, even a bond referendum -- all during this year. Next year, we have city elections in Birmingham. In 2014, we have statewide elections for governor and the other constitutional offices, along with legislative elections and, again, a round of local elections.

But few votes are going to matter as much as the one coming up Tuesday. It's the General Election, where we decide who will be president of the United States for the next four years. There is no suspense in that race in Alabama; Republican Mitt Romney will take the state, probably by a wide margin, and our nine electoral votes will go his way.

Still, don't let that discourage you from going to the polls. Even though it does not elect our president, the popular vote is at stake, and whoever wins the nation's top office needs to see a mandate of some sort, if that is possible.

More important, there are crucial local races to consider. In Jefferson County, we will be electing district and circuit court judges to serve for the next six years. These are the individuals who have the grave responsibility of deciding whether somebody charged with a crime remains free, or whether the civil case we've brought forward is decided in a fair and impartial way. We'll elect judges at Jefferson County Family Court, where our most vulnerable children find themselves far too often.

In past elections, The Birmingham News editorial board has interviewed candidates and made recommendations for voters. We were never trying to tell you how to vote, but rather, which candidates we believed were best qualified, regardless of political party.

This year, we decided that would not be possible. Since Alabama Media Group started its operation on Oct. 1, we realized there just would not be enough time before the Nov. 6 election for us to properly vet the many candidates who are running for office.

The candidate interviews we conduct before each election take hours and hours of time. We generally start them months before an election so that every candidate, if he or she so desires, has an opportunity to be heard.

We believed if we could not conduct thorough interviews with the candidates, it would be wrong for us to recommend which candidate is better. So this election cycle, we make no recommendations.

That aside, we urge you to be a smart voter. Find out about the candidates. Most of them have websites where you can learn about their philosophies and plans. Understand that it shouldn't matter whether a judge is a Republican or a Democrat; that is just the flawed system we have for selecting judge. Vote for the person, not the party, and do your best to find out about the person, especially in the judicial races.

The Jefferson County Bar Poll is one tool to use. Find it here. The Bar Poll is a vote of members of the Jefferson County Bar on which judicial candidates they find most qualified -- and least qualified.

Read our candidate profiles. They can be found here.

And depend on your own, good common sense. We can tell you it takes a pretty fair investment of time sometimes to determine the most qualified candidate. But you can find out.

We hope to resume making candidate recommendations during next year's election cycle. We believe it one of the important responsibilities of a newspaper and a media group.

For now, though, prepare yourself to vote Tuesday. Many Americans have fought and died, fought and lived, marched in the streets and have stood their ground for this privilege. Exercise it.

Between accusations of biased coverage, waning power to influence readers, and the very real potential to drive away advertisers, newspapers are better off keeping their political endorsements to themselves.