During the week of the first presidential debate, the Ole Miss campus hosted a large number of media personnel, from both obscure and well-known sources. However, after watching the lead-up to the other two debates and the media reactions to those campuses, it becomes obvious that Ole Miss received much more media attention than the other schools have. I have friends at both Washington University and Belmont University and both of my friends complained that for all the stress they went through there was not much media coverage of their campuses during the debate. They further elaborated that all the main media outlets sent their best reporters to Oxford but their less important ones to St. Louis and Nashville.
However, several reasons could exist to why Ole Miss received more media coverage than the other schools. First, Ole Miss is one of the least likely places that people would have expected to see host the first presidential debate of 2008. Second, reporters liked to tie our racial history into stories involving the debate and candidates. Finally, the question of whether the debate would occur at Ole Miss was an exciting and interesting story to report on.
Even though the Ole Miss debate had several interesting stories surrounding it and by comparison the other schools seemed less exciting, I was still surprised to learn and see the lack of major reporters in St. Louis and Nashville. All of this makes me wonder what type of coverage Hofstra University will receive during the debate tonight. But it does seem natural that Hofstra would receive more attention that the past two debate sites since it is the site of the final debate and is in New York, which is close to many media headquarters.