Charlotte Grimes offers some insight into the process of political coverage by journalists in my own regional paper. It seems to be making the blogosphere rounds too. One of my State Chair colleagues in Washington (Scott Lindsley) responds in kind;
The fact that you are addressing the issue of third party media coverage is encouraging.
However, believing that there are no partisan leanings in media coverage of political figures ignores the reality of the past few election cycles. Evidenced by the time given to the most trivial issues of the Republicans and Democrats in relation to the power points of the third party candidates. The media are quite often ignoring serious issues and candidates that are working very hard on a 'real' campaign (to address the 'is it a real race' question raised in your article).

Your faith in journalism may hold some weight when addressing local issues, but on a national level and on many statewide campaigns there has been scarce coverage of legitimate candidates with serious campaigns. My home state of Washington is a prime example of this. The 2006 Libertarian candidate Bruce Guthrie's statewide campaign had an office, a fleet of volunteers, radio, bus, and television ads and still had to mortgage his home and raise over a million dollars in order for the TV station to have him in the debates. Still the media only included him as an 'also ran'. It wasn't the Secretary of State deciding who gets into the debates, it's the media outlets.
Of course there should be reasonable barriers for entry into the news and the debates. But should they be so high that one has to mortgage your home to be heard just because you chose to be of a less popular party?
Here's my crack at it (after the jump).