4 thoughts on “Oh, well. Never mind”

1. [email protected] September 17, 2005 at 5:41 pm

   What confuses me more than anything is why in the world The State ran Bob’s piece in the first place. I’m honestly curious. How do you decide what Op-Eds to run, and is there some sort of system or set of rules for determining what’s appropriate? Bob’s rant is almost as weird as the fact that it got published.

   Reply ↓
2. Brad Warthen September 18, 2005 at 5:35 am

   In general, that’s a tough question to answer. It’s sort of like asking, “What is news judgment?” I mean, the J-school people have come up with formulas for defining newsworthiness, involving a set of tests such as interest, importance, proximity and timeliness, but such formulas are like trying to define beauty (some “experts” have tried to define that, too, as a function of symmetry or some such, but I think they fall short). Basically, it’s an art rather than a science, and recognizing newsworthiness is something that comes with experience.
   In general, though, on a given op-ed page, we look for a mix of different viewpoints, subjects and tones among the most interesting, timely, relevant and well-written pieces on that particular day. People who try to compare a selection decision one day with one from another don’t understand the process. A piece that wouldn’t even be in the running one day could be the best available on another. It’s all a matter of what it’s competing with, or whether it gives a different viewpoint on a subject that’s already been examined from another perspective, or some combination of a host of other variables.
   One category to which we tend to give preference consists of relevant pieces that disagree with or criticize us. Bob’s fits into that category quite neatly. All that had appeared on our pages about the change in publishers had been my own expendable column on the subject earlier in the week, which I wrote mainly for fun (and to provide some leavening for what I expected to find on our news pages, which was the usual play-it-straight, stone-faced seriousness with which newspapers tend to approach news about themselves).
   After that, we were certainly in the market for something that took a more serious, critical view of this development. In fact, this was a piece Bob had originally written for his blog, which he had showed to one of my colleagues before posting. That colleague showed it to me, and it became an op-ed column.
   And Bob’s piece was highly relevant. It’s a very common refrain in Columbia to complain about the fact that so many of our business leaders are actually employees of corporations headquartered elsewhere, and cycle through town too quickly to provide any sort of constant local leadership in the private sector. While I don’t think this situation is a perfect application of that observation, I can certainly see how someone outside the newspaper would think it was.
   On the whole, it’s just the kind of thing we look for in an op-ed piece — relevant, well-written commentary that provides a point of view different from our own on a given issue.

   Reply ↓
3. Lee September 21, 2005 at 7:52 am

   Bob McAllister is an articulate writer with a clear focus on what he perceives to be a problem. I enjoy him, but the reason the State publishes him is because he is polite and does not cross the line in to specific criticism of gross mismanagement in the city, USC or state programs which the liberal editors support without question.

   Reply ↓
4. Brad Warthen September 22, 2005 at 2:09 pm

   One of these days I’ve got to meet one of these “liberal editors” that are supposedly lurking all about here.
   For that matter, it would be interesting to meet one who supports ANYTHING without question.

   Reply ↓