Barack Obama greeted supporters in Ohio. (Photo: Damon Winter/The New York Times) His visit here also quickly spread by word-of-mouth. He dropped by the YMCA on Summit Street for a morning game of basketball and before he left, he had taken his photograph with a class of young children at a day-care center. Before the first debate, his campaign drew a fair bit of local news coverage during his team’s visit to Clearwater Beach, Fla. Leading up to the second debate, Mr.

Obama was prominently featured in news reports as he hunkered down with advisers in Asheville, N.C. And for the third debate, Mr. Obama drew the most coverage of all, prompting one TV station on Tuesday to put these words on the screen: Where is John McCain? All presidential candidates like turning to the local media when they make their way through town.

For Republicans and Democrats alike, it is viewed as a far more effective way to get out their message, which they hope will be conveyed to voters without the often-criticized filter of the national news media. (Mr. Obama took only five questions in one brief press conference during his stay here.) While Mr. McCain often grants interviews to local stations before or after his campaign events, he did not decide to capitalize on turning his debate preparations into a local news story.

(He has prepared for his debates either at his home in Arizona or Virginia.) It was particularly noticeable here this week in northwestern Ohio, where coverage of Mr. Obama’s economic address kicked off three days of an unusual Obama saturation that by Tuesday evening featured local Republican officials on television grumbling about their candidate’s absence from the stage. We love Toledo. Everybody has been just wonderful, Mr. Obama said in a brief interview on one of the local stations.