Less room for us,
and more room for you
By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
LAST MONDAY, for the first time ever to my knowledge, we published this page without a single editorial.
An editorial, I should explain, is what we call that vertical item to the upper left. The thing you are reading right now is called a “column.” A column expresses an individual writer’s perspective, while an editorial reflects the consensus of the newspaper’s editorial board. That’s why editorials, unlike columns, are not signed.
Anyway, we didn’t have any of those on last Monday’s page. And we’re not going to have any tomorrow, or on any subsequent Mondays, as long as this is well received by readers and keeps working for us.
Letters to the Editor are one of the most popular items in the newspaper. We always have more letters than we can fit into the paper, so why not give you more of what you like? And of course, that’s fewer editorials we have to write, which is where the “working for us” part comes in.
Anyway, we gave it a try last week, and then I asked readers of my blog to let me know what they thought of it. Here’s a sampling of the responses:
“Dave” wrote:
I would weigh in with a thumbs up on the Monday Forum. Another idea would be to pose one key question and solicit “person on the street” answers, preferably with pictures….
Then “Herb,” whom I promise I did not put up to this, responded:
Personally, I like the editorials better, because I have a great degree of trust in you guys and your perspective. You have access to a lot more facts and I presume, more time to process it, at least on local and national issues. I’m not trying to (“)smear honey on your beard” (German proverb) — I am honest when I say that your position carries a lot more weight than the average Joe Blow, who may be just venting.
Mark Whittington countered that:
Why don’t you get out of the office and come and actually talk to the people (the workers)?… Nobody reads the paper because it doesn’t apply to their own lives. Over and over again, I hear people talk about being worked into the ground, not having any rights, being paid crummy wages, missing their families, not having enough time to take care of their business, etc…. Why don’t you make Monday, “Worker’s Day”?
Michael Bloom pleaded:
DON’T do a “person on the street” segment. Unless you do it the right way, and show your readers how dumb a vast majority of people are. Like ask them first… if they are voters, and if they are, to recite the Pledge of Allegiance and/or the Preamble to the Constitution. Now that would be sad but enlightening. I would definitely read that….
“Dave” came back with:
The “Man on the Street” interviews are invaluable for exactly the reasons you note. You may find one college student who may be historically illiterate and you may find a cab driver who reads Shakespeare. That is what makes that form of data collection interesting to read. So, yes, it has to be done the right way and you don’t want to intentionally humiliate anyone either.
“Lee,” who seldom agrees with Mark, did for once:
I agree that the editors should use their day off to meet some real people, and avoid their usual chums, like politicians and each other. Better yet, the editors should start their own sideline businesses so they can get some real experience as taxpayers.
“james potter” made several points in e.e. cummings style:
i do not think it will end up working. extremists will simply take over the editorial page every week on their pet topic. i think monday editorials are also useful to help focus the general assembly during the legislative session. i will normally glance or read the editorials, i rarely pay attention to the letters to the editor since many appear to be “organized”.
I thought Mr. “potter” raised some points worth addressing, which I did along these lines:
1. No one, “extremists” or otherwise, will “take over” the page. The fact is that we still have to sift through the vast number of letters we get, pick a good, representative sample of them to run, edit them, put them on the page, then proof the page before publishing it. Our role in all that is in no way diminished. (In other words, “Lee,” this doesn’t give us a “day off.”) There’s just room for more letters than before.
2. The first morning legislators are in town each week of the session is Tuesday, not Monday. So the most relevant days to run statewide-issue editorials, if you want lawmakers to be part of your audience, are Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and our biggest-circulation day, Sunday.
3. We do our best to spot and frustrate any attempt to stuff our letters space via an “organized” campaign. I’m sure there are some that are sophisticated enough to mask it, but from what I’ve seen, most letter-writing campaigns are pretty ham-handed and obvious. On the other hand, will you see people making similar points and seeming to walk in lockstep with other letter writers? Yep. But that is mostly attributable to the fact that partisan politics — with the media acting as facilitators — has oversimplified all too many complex issues to the point that too many people see things in the same black-and-white terms, and even express themselves using the same “talking points” that one side or the other of our polarized politics has generally agreed upon. That can make a lot of letters look like a part of a campaign when they are not.
Check out tomorrow’s page and see what you think.
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If the editorial board is comprised of extremists then what? This isn’t the case at the State but look at the latest staged event by the NY Slimes. They sat on information that they had a year ago and waited for the Patriot Act renewal debate to begin and offered up their “stored” news item. The Times stock continues to drop and my hope is Pinch Sulzberger and company ends up in Chapter 11, the sooner the better. In the meantime, these anti-American “extremists” released classified information that had been useful in stopping an emerging dirty bomb cell. The Ohio Muslim cell that was planning to blow up the NY bridge was also discovered due to these wiretap and cell scans. The Clinton administration had also done the same things in their day. On top of that, Congress had been consulted, as well as legal reviews before the scans took place. What is really sad, and also enrages me, is that the Sulzberger crowd would opt for the terrorist act to take place if somehow, any way, it could damage the Bush presidency. Now that is what I call extremist.
I am happy to see that The State finally realized many of their readers are more interested in the opinions of other readers on the issues facing our city, our state, and our nation than they are the opinion of The State’s Editorial Board. What took you so long?
I have complained about the tiny space for the Letters column a few times over the past few years. Submitting letters to the column is pure frustration. Unless you are “somebody”, or your letter is calling for reparations for blacks, or some other issue dear to the hearts of the editors, you better keep it under 200 words. So, you rack your brain trying to cover a complicated issue with 200 words or less, then the editor sits on it for a few weeks until what you wrote about becomes “Untimely” and is rejected. Or, just rejected because “we get many letters” and we don’t want to give the Letters column more space than Ariail’s cartoon.
Your readers are keeping you in business. They deserve better treatment. If you don’t want to share the editorial page space more often, add another page.
I take back what I said last week. The letters today were fairly decent. Good balance on the whole, I thought. Nice, also, to have some commentary from other news sources.
The letter writers told you media pundits that paying bonuses to teachers with “National Certification” was a waste of money.
Now it’s official.
Teacher credentials get little credit
Researchers find national certification has minimal impact on pupils’ test scores
By LISA MICHALS
The State
Dec. 21, 2005
WriterNational board-certified teachers in South Carolina have little impact in boosting the achievement of poor students, a USC report said.
But a broader study is needed to better examine the overall effects national
board-certified teachers have in schools, according to the report, which was released by the South Carolina Department of Education Tuesday.