Dick Wadhams and Taylor West are the spokespeople, respectively, for Colorado U.S. Senate candidates Bob Schaffer, the Republican, and Mark Udall, the Democrat.

Their names should sound familiar because, since April 1, they've been quoted in more newspaper articles in the Rocky Mountain News and The Denver Post than the men they work for.

In Rocky stories since April 1 that contained a statement from the Schaffer campaign, 68 percent quote only Wadhams, not Schaffer (63 percent of Udall stories quote West, not Udall).

In Post articles during the same period that have a statement from the Schaffer campaign, 70 percent cite only Wadhams, not Schaffer (78 percent of Udall articles have quotations from West or other Udall aides, not Udall).

You look at these numbers and you think the Senate campaigns are using their spokespeople to shield the candidates from reporters.

Not so, says Lynn Bartels, a Rocky reporter covering the campaign. "Neither candidate hides behind his spokesperson."

Then why don't we hear more from the candidates? Because reporters aren't insisting on it.

Bartels told me that she can usually reach the candidates, especially Schaffer because she has his private phone numbers. But for day-to-day campaign stories, partly as a courtesy and partly because of the flair and insight of the campaign spokespeople, she'll talk to the mouthpieces.

"You have to make a distinction between process stories and the candidates saying, 'This is what I believe in and why I believe it,' " the Post's Michael Riley told me. He's inclined to let the spokespeople handle the "process" stories, even though he says a spokesman like Wadhams "tends to push the rhetoric more than his candidate does." (Disclosure: a client works for Democrats.)

It's reasonable for journalists not to insist on talking to candidates for every story. Still, I don't know about you, but I'm sick of hearing from Wadhams and West. I want to hear from the candidates more often.

One of the most fun things about being a journalist is that you don't know what someone's going to say until you ask them the question.

By taking the easy route and talking to campaign spokespeople so often, reporters are depriving themselves and us of the possibility of learning something surprising about the candidates. I think reporters should lower the bar, and ask candidates about routine stories, advertisements, financial statements and such more often.

And in some cases, the dailies aren't even interviewing the candidates for serious stories.

On Tuesday, for example, the Post should have insisted that Schaffer himself explain why he thought it was OK to accept $227,000 in severance pay last year when he quit working for Aspect Energy, an oil company, to run for Senate. Similarly, the Post should have asked Udall to explain whether his wife's investments in renewable energy influence his positions on renewable energy issues.

The Post's Riley agreed with me that in an election, the candidates themselves should be heard as much as possible. He told me that as the election nears and Udall and Schaffer are on the campaign trail, he'll be quoting them more.

Equal time. Jay Marvin told the Boulder Daily Camera that the only reason he had Jared Polis on his AM-760 talk radio show June 13 was because federal rules mandate airtime for political candidates.

I didn't think this was true, but it is. In fact, if a broadcaster like Marvin gives one candidate air time, the other candidate can not only demand equal time but use it any way he or she wants, according to Andrew Schwartzman of the Media Access Project.

In other words, Polis could have asked Marvin to hand over the mike to him for the same amount of time he gave to the other congressional candidates. And he could have avoided Marvin's interrogation.

Conservatives aplenty. In a panel discussion June 11, GOP state Chair Dick Wadhams said Sen. John McCain will not be hurt by Focus on the Family's James Dobson's promise not to vote for McCain in November.

That's newsworthy, and the Post's story on this topic was justified.

But it's unfortunate that the panel discussion, during which Wadhams made this statement, was so ideologically unbalanced. It consisted of three conservatives (Wadhams, Post columnist David Harsanyi and the Independence Institute's Jessica Corry) and one independent analyst, Eric Sondermann.

You wouldn't expect such a panel to be sponsored by the Post, but it was organized by the Post's PoliticsWest Web site.

It would have been a better panel, and more in keeping with journalistic fairness, if it included a broader range of opinion.

Jason Salzman, president of Effect Communications, is the author of Making the News: A Guide for Activists and Nonprofits. Reach him at salzmanj@RockyMountainNews.com.