Nyhan hates how news pegs decide coverage:
[P]olicy and biography stories are typically written early in campaigns when few voters are paying attention. By the time people start paying attention to the race, those sorts of stories are "old news" and not revisited unless there’s a news peg. As a result, horse race coverage tends to dominate during the late stages of campaigns. That's why negative ads and surrogate attacks can be democratically valuable— at their best, they can force media coverage to focus on a candidate’s weak point and provide a hook for reporters to explain the facts of the issue.
