Editorial Writing: Does Anyone Care?

By Rod Dreher • April 17, 2012, 10:37 AM

The Pulitzer committee did not confer an award this year for editorial writing. It made me think: does anybody read editorials anymore?

I used to write editorials for a living. Indeed, my former Dallas Morning News colleagues won last year’s Pulitzer for editorial writing. I hadn’t realized until reading the 2012 Pulitzer news that after I left writing newspaper editorials for a living, I quit reading newspaper editorials. I read op-eds and columns, because they have a particular voice. The institutional voice of the editorial? Not so much. Is it that editorials aren’t as well written today as they used to be? Or is it more the case that the voice of the institution as an opinion leader doesn’t matter as much anymore. I think the latter. I still read good editorials on occasion, but now that editorial writing is no longer my occupation, I never feel the need to check and see what this or that newspaper has to say about an issue. How about you? Why or why not?

UPDATE: The daily paper I read is The New York Times, and I never, ever read their editorials, because based on experience, I know exactly what they’re going to say about everything. They never, ever surprise. It’s wasted space on the most valuable newspaper real estate in the country.

23 Responses to Editorial Writing: Does Anyone Care?

Carlo says:

April 17, 2012 at 10:45 am

Nobody I know reads editorials because everybody knows they reflect a pre-packaged political position (i.e. they are just exercises in ideological propaganda). The supreme examples: the New York Times editorial page. In fact, I would say that, because of its influence, the NYTimes editorial page is largely responsible for the fact that nobody I know takes editorial pages seriously any longer (nor reads them).
Sam M says:

April 17, 2012 at 10:46 am

I tend to follow editorials that connect with me professionally. I work in health care, so I scan the local and regional papers to get their take on reform or some of the local battles that are brewing, just to get a sense of who’s “winning.” I assume if I worked as a teacher or high school administrator I’d do something similar with editorials about education. But things like political endorsements? nah.
Edward Hamilton says:

April 17, 2012 at 10:57 am

Blog posts: Same basic function. Available on demand. Higher quality (at least in the tail of the distribution). Free.
David J. White says:

April 17, 2012 at 11:07 am

I have found that my attitude towards newspaper editorials is much like my attitude towards op-ed columnists: after I read a few columns by one person, I have a pretty good idea of what their opinions are about pretty much every issue that might come up, so there’s no point in wasting any more time reading them. For example, when Anna Quindlen used to write for the NY Times, I remember noticing that every time she wrote about abortion she said pretty much the same thing; she could have simply submitted a column with the single word “Abortion!” and left the rest blank and saved the ink, and I think her readers could easily have filled in the rest. Most opinion columnists seem to like to ride particular hobby horses on a regular basis.

The same, I think, goes for newspaper editorials. After reading a handful, it becomes pretty clear to me what that particular paper’s “voice” and bent are, and thus a simple glace at the headline is enough to give me a pretty good idea of what the rest of the editorial will say.

I remember that when I was living in Philadelphia in 1992, the Philadephia Inquirer editorial board endorsed Clinton in the presidential election, and wrote an editorial explaining why. After the election, the paper published an article about their editorial board and about the discussions leading up to their endorsement and their reasons for it. They congratulated themselves for having such a “diverse” editorical board. They didn’t go as far as James Watt (Reagan’s Secretary of the Interior) did and say that their board included “a woman, a black, two Jews, and a cripple”, but pretty close.

They also remarked that their board (of about 12 members, if I recall) was pretty unanimous in deciding to endorse Clinton, and that no one on the board had seriously argued for endorsing Bush. A reader wrote in to point out that Bush had gotten 30-something percent of the popular vote in the election, and that if the editorial board had been truly diverse in anything but a merely cosmetic sense, it should have included at least two or three people out of 12 who would have argued for endorsing Bush. Having a bunch of people who look different but think the same way isn’t really very diverse.

Maybe your experience at the DMN was different; but I suspect that that’s true of many editorical boards besides the Philadelphia Inquirer’s, and that’s why I think that after reading a few editorials in a particular paper, I have a pretty good idea of what all the rest are going to sound like, so I don’t need to waste my time reading any more.
Michael says:

April 17, 2012 at 11:14 am

I think with the current media culture, technological evolution, and the rising generation of millennials, institutional editorials seem less and less attractive to readers. With social media like Facebook and Twitter, readers gravitate more toward the personalities of specific writers because of their individuality. Individuals can surprise you with their insight or with an unexpected take on an issue. I can’t remember the last time I was surprised by a major newspaper’s stance taken in an editorial, or at least struck with some new epiphany the way I often am when reading individual journalists and writers. I think the same holds true for many readers. Before my current job I was the editor of small newspaper in Tennessee. I always got far more reaction — positive and negative — from my own column rather than the editorials I wrote for the paper. Editorials are indeed written by human beings, but far too often they seem predictable and sterile — just holding the predetermined party line in the old, predetermined ways.
Mercer says:

April 17, 2012 at 11:16 am

I read them when they are about local issues. On national issues they are rarely as well written as the best of the internet. Politicians refer to editorials in their ads so they must have some value.
Liam says:

April 17, 2012 at 11:17 am

I would read editorials in The Economist as a general matter, because I respect (even if I don’t always agree) with the subjective perspectives of its editors. But I don’t have that kind of respect for any other news organs of note; if I read an editorial, it’s just to get a sense for the rhetoric (spins, memes, et cet.) that a given perspective is trolling out for the day. The entire punditariat likewise. I am more interested in op-eds from people outside the punditariat.

The NY Times has had a particular gift in recent years for taking decent critics and turning them into awful opinionators. Mark Bittman comes to mind as the most recent victim of this conversion; his editorial persona is now just a dreadful self-important bore.
Liam says:

April 17, 2012 at 11:26 am

PS: hold the presses on my diatribe about Mr Bittman’s switch of gigs. I just got a column from Mark Bittman in my RSS feed – it appears he is returning to a food column in the Dining section as of this week. Not sure if that means his recent gig as an opinionator reached its sell-by date yet or not, but we can hope, can’t we?
Charles Cosimano says:

April 17, 2012 at 11:26 am

I think, (which is something I try not to do too often as it causes headaches) that it actually has been a very very long time since anyone actually paid any attention to editorials. They are holdovers of a previous age, when for some unexplainable reason people actually would care what they said, but that time is long in the past and frankly no one cares what any columnist in the NYT or any other newspaper has to say about much of anything, unless they agree with the writer.
Franklin Evans says:

April 17, 2012 at 11:49 am

I view the editorial page, complete with letters to the editor, as a precursor to the blog. I judge such pages as I do blogs, and I try to stay objective in the face of anonymity of the editorial authors. It had (maybe, in some places, still has) a good reason for that anonymity, but my native cynicism gets the strongest vote almost every time.

The best editorials bank on that anonymity by addressing a hot or controversial topic in a blunt and open fashion. Anonymity facilitates reactions to the ideas and opinions by avoiding immediate obstacles on the pesonal level. It doesn’t always work, especially when the personal overrides the anonymity (as it does for some with the NY Times, q.e.d. above).
Patrick says:

April 17, 2012 at 11:52 am

I agree with Edward Hamilton. Why-oh-why would I read the likes of David Brooks and Thomas Friedman when there are Internet writers who have much less canned opinions and are sometimes thinking in real time (which is kind of interesting).

I’d add that major newspapers have sort of lost their previous aura of being “respected institutions*. The run-up to the Iraq War basically sealed it, when none of these dummies bothered to put tough questions to the Bush Administration.
Rod Dreher says:

April 17, 2012 at 11:54 am

The NY Times has had a particular gift in recent years for taking decent critics and turning them into awful opinionators. Mark Bittman comes to mind as the most recent victim of this conversion; his editorial persona is now just a dreadful self-important bore.

Boy, isn’t that the truth! I used to enjoy Frank Bruni’s restaurant writing, but as a columnist, he’s awful. He has no interesting opinions, and writes about homosexuality constantly, as if he can’t find anything else to think about, or rather, as if homosexuality is the lens through which he sees the world. It’s just dull in a general-interest columnist. Similarly with Bittman, he’s one of my favorite food writers, but boy is his column dull — and I say that as someone who usually agrees with him. Both of them are creative and challenging on the subject of food and food culture, but when they try to be general-interest columnists, they come up hard against their limits as thinkers and writers.
MWorrell says:

April 17, 2012 at 11:58 am

Good writers are worth reading. I don’t care what they write or where.

But I think the internet killed editorials. You used to have maybe a couple a day in the newspaper to consider, plus whatever was in magazines you subscribed to. Consequently you were actually curious to hear what an intelligent, reasoned person had to say about a current concern (as opposed to the people at work). Now there’s a glut, and with all the blogs I read, I don’t seek them out too much. But I like them.
PeterK says:

April 17, 2012 at 12:13 pm

about the only editorials I read are those in the WSJ. IMHO they are well reasoned, clear and to the point.
as for local papers I have pretty much given up reading the DMN’s editorials because I could pretty much guess what their stance would be on particular subjects and they weren’t even a pleasure to read. that said I much prefer the DMN’s editorial blog where the ed board engages the commenters
I occasionally read my local paper’s editorials (Richmond Va), but always look forward to reading the column’s written by Bart Hinkle who is on their ed board. a real delight
Skrifara says:

April 17, 2012 at 12:52 pm

Never used to read editiorials (even though I’m a life long op-ed fan). Then a little while ago I realized that one of the best places to see lively discussion of local issues–not just politics–is the comboxes for the editorials in the online version of my local paper. Now I often read the editorials in print and look forward to catching the discussion next time I’m online.
johan says:

April 17, 2012 at 2:44 pm

Agreed. It is a pre-determined opinion. Who cares? They should use the space for cartoons.
Mark says:

April 17, 2012 at 2:59 pm

Not sure if we’re talking columnists or the uncredited editorials. If general editorials, I agree. I could tell you what they are going to say before I read them most of the time. If you’re talking columnists, two names stand apart: David Brooks and Ross Douthat. Don’t always agree with Brooks, but he makes me think and is always interesting. I rarely disagree with Douthat these days, but he gives my views a voice. What they both have in common is a civility and willingness to move outside of the liberal v, conservative blueprint (as it is practiced today).
MIke says:

April 17, 2012 at 5:24 pm

It’s worth pointing out that, under Pulitzer definitions, Bruni isn’t an editorial writer but instead does commentary. There is a significant difference. When the DMN won the Pulitzer, it was for coverage of very local issues. Most of the Pulitzer winners for editorial writing focus on local issues and don’t go to the pundit class.

The problem with papers who have a national focus (NYT, WSJ, WaPo) is that even the editorial writers are working on finding their next job or next appearance on cable TV or a book deal. They aren’t focused enough on local issues.
JonF says:

April 17, 2012 at 5:47 pm

Other than on local matters I have not read newspaper editorials in years. It’s generally enough to note the subject title and the name of the author and then know in advance what will be said according to formula.
Winston says:

April 17, 2012 at 5:57 pm

The trouble with NY Times editorials is exactly what Rod said – totally predictable on any issue, down to the commas. I imagine they’ve all been written for the next 20 years, and are pulled from the file each day as the need arises. Peter, the problem with WSJ editorials is that they lie – they often reach preordained conclusions based on faulty or misleading evidence.

I don’t read editorials, and I doubt any editorial from any source has made a detectable difference on any issue for the last 20 years.
Darwin's S-list says:

April 17, 2012 at 10:31 pm

My local paper’s ed board is socially liberal and a little more moderate when it comes to business (at least the big employers in town). It functions as a sort of mouthpiece for the local establishment. As elsewhere, the prose is consistently dull and unsurprising. The only value to be gained from reading it is to learn the priorities of the web of business, government and non-profit leaders. When it comes to national issues, I’ve never read anything that was remotely insightful from them. With so much good commentary out there now, why would I consult their opinion?

They still go through the motions of endorsing political candidates. I can’t imagine the voter for whom that endorsement would matter.
Joanna says:

April 17, 2012 at 10:49 pm

Nope. They really don’t. Too much echo chamber on both sides.
Bill Logan says:

April 18, 2012 at 7:38 pm

As the blog you linked to notes, there was also no Pulitzer awarded this year for fiction. Do you also believe that no one reads fiction anymore?

Most likely is that no one editorial was able to receive a majority vote in the committee. This is the leading speculation as to why no fiction prize was awarded.