Final update: Newspapers continue to endorse presidential candidates, but does anybody really care?

This is the fifth and final update chronicling which newspapers have endorsed which presidential candidates.

A rising number of observers believe that newspaper endorsements for president no longer have much impact on how Americans cast their votes. For one thing, ever fewer people read newspapers, particularly people under 35. For another, 50 and 60 years ago, most major cities had at least two competing daily newspapers that often found themselves on the opposite sides of presidential contests.

But there are no longer any just a few truly competitive two-daily cities, key exceptions being New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. In the past few decades, hundreds of dailies have turned off the presses for good. It's worse some places. This year, having never recovered anywhere near its old circulation levels after Hurricane Kstrina, New Orleans became the largest U.S. city without any daily newspaper when the Times-Picayune went to three days a week.

Three years ago, in a survey of 1,000 adults, the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press revealed that a paltry 43 percent of Americans said they thought losing the local newspaper would negatively affect civic life in their community "a lot." And just 33 percent it would matter "a lot" to them personally if the local paper folded.

A dozen or so surviving daily newspapers that used to endorse in the presidential race no longer do. The Chicago Sun-Times and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel are among those that endorsed in 2008 but have quit. Some newspapers, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today and the Deseret News in Salt Lake City have long-standing do-not-endorse policies.

Endorsements that seem to matter are those for local and state candidates. If they didn't matter, those candidates wouldn't still scramble to get them.

Many endorsements this year, whether they backed Mitt Romney or Barack Obama were lukewarm. A common expression in the editorials they wrote: It wasn't an easy decision to make. Only major paper, the Syracuse, New York, Post-Standard, wrote editorial saying they found neither candidate worthy of endorsing. Other editorial boards or publishers may have come to same conclusion and decided to say nothing.

Many newspapers that endorsed Barack Obama in 2008 changed course this year. By my count, 39 newspapers that endorsed Obama in 2008 are endorsing Romney this year.  The Orlando Sentinel and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram were the biggest. Only six that endorsed John McCain are endorsing Obama. The one with the most potential impact, being in a battleground state, is the endorsement of the Winston-Salem Journal in North Carolina.

The day before the election in 2008, 407 daily and weekly newspapers had endorsed Barack Obama, against 212 for John McCain.

cMy count as of Sunday evening was 112 daily and 43 weekly or twice-weekly papers have endorsed Obama; 144 daily and 32 weekly newspapers have endorsed Romney. (It should be noted that 21 of those weeklies in Minnesota are owned by the same company.) Total circulation of the newspapers endorsing Obama: 18.8 million. Total for Romney: 11.3 million.

Below the fold you can see what the endorsement list looks like so far this year. A ' means the newspaper changed parties in its endorsement for president this year compared with 2008. A ° means the newspaper didn't endorse any presidential candidate in 2008.

In comments, please add to the list any endorsements you know of that haven't been included or that I've mistakenly put in favor of the wrong candidate.

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