In my new column at CJR, I defend the value of convention coverage despite a lack of breaking news. Here’s how it begins:

Every four years, the two presidential candidates do battle in a series of high-stakes televised events that could shape the outcome of the campaign. They also take part in some highly scripted programming where little real news is made and few viewers’ minds are changed.

Voters who take the word of elite political journalists would be forgiven for thinking that the first events are the presidential debates and the second are the party conventions, but as the political scientists Robert Erikson and Christopher Wlezien show, the truth is actually the opposite…

Read the whole thing for more.