Colleagues (and bosses) are often an advantage: crafting positions as a group requires some respect.

Once upon a time, in a picturesque village in upstate New York, I witnessed the editorial process in its purest form. Its simplicity and effectiveness was a beauty to behold.

It was summertime. Brunch cruises plied pristine Skaneateles Lake; wealthy townsmen played polo on Sunday afternoons. The offices of the weekly Skaneateles Press, set in a row of historic buildings, overlooked the lake on one side and helped form a charming main street on the other. That summer, a shopping center was proposed just outside town. Only quality shops, the developers assured; Skaneateles' resort character would not be tarnished.

One day the editor/owner/publisher arrived at work to find a blueprint on the doorstep--complete with names of the shopping center's prospective anchors. You guessed it: discount chains. An ensuing editorial killed the project. Serenity lived.

Alas, life in today's metropolitan Ivory Towers is seldom so clear-cut. In Skaneateles, the Press was owned by a midcareer couple, both journalists, who had escaped the rush of Washington. The husband was publisher and executive editor; he wrote the editorials. How straightforward! Most of us, however, answer to someone, somewhere; even before the editorial persuading begins, deciding on an editorial position involves persuasion. Issues, too, come in more complicated shapes. Sometimes the liars aren't so cleanly unmasked, and sometimes it's hard to ten the good guys from the bad.

Yet there are benefits to the larger-staffed, possibly chain-owned newspaper world most of us live in today. Call it an editorial board--or just an editorial staff, as we do at my paper. Fact is, in addition to enduring the trials and tribulations that go along with working through issues, editorial writers benefit from having colleagues and bosses.

It's like life at home: Living alone is great for the freedom it gives you. You can do what you want, when you want to, and in the way that you want to. It has some drawbacks, however. You don't have anyone to hear your impassioned solutions for everything that's wrong in the world. You have no one who'll confront you when you're thinking slightly paranoid thoughts about the neighbor's motivations. You have no one to listen to, to argue with, to learn from or to teach--even to have coffee with (or doughnuts!)

Such is the case in a one-person shop: advantages, yes, but dangers too.

An editorial staff, making decisions together and with the boss, has its own set of problems. Decision-making gets messy. Maybe the publisher has a thing about free trade, or fair trade. Maybe he worries about what he'll hear on the golf course (not to speak of voicemail). Maybe the editorial writers get split down the middle sometimes and it all seems too hard.

But they can brainstorm; they can try out ideas and arguments; they can remind each other of previous stands and underlying principles. They can play devil's advocate--and they can leave, do more reporting and come back again. They can listen especially keenly to the one who has followed a particular issue long enough to gain expertise.

They can, together, find ways to work to answer this question: What is right for this newspaper to say?

That's it. The publisher has a little bigger foot than the rest. He has to be able to live with the outcome--and so do the editorial page editor and whoever does the writing. None of them forget that they're working toward that one goal: Given its history, its philosophy, and everything that's been discussed, what should this newspaper say?

Asking the question that way takes care of a lot of problems. It allows any individual the opportunity to think, "That's not quite the way I look at it, but it fits with everything we've argued in print for the last three years" And it leads to a definite outcome, not some mushy committeespeak.

You'll notice I didn't mention a publisher dictating policy, and I didn't mention voting. Neither did I mention stopping short of a clear editorial position. That's because an effective editorial staff, working for an effective boss, knows that none of those models results in excellence. Editorial writers aren't speechwriters; they must tap into their own fire. The publisher is accountable; therefore voting--at least in any formal way--is highly problematical. And stopping short of a clear stand is nothing short of abdication.

Easily said, you say. Keeping those methods to a minimum is no easy task. That is true. But over the long haul, the most powerful editorial page is one created by a publisher and a staff of journalists who have decided to lead and: 1) have general agreement on the paper's political philosophy--call it underlying principles; 2) are capable of working through issues until a clear stand emerges and those who are accountable can live with it; and 3) articulate the stand with clarity and power.

An effective editorial page editor manages both up and down, so to speak. She respects the publisher's responsibility for the page; likewise, the effective publisher respects the expertise and judgment of staff. It's important that this relationship work.

There will be bumps. Just as living with another person requires give-and-take and the art of persuasion, crafting editorial positions as a group requires respect for underlying values, respect for expertise, respect for one another--and, ultimately, respect for clarity. Try it; it works.

Susan Albright, a former NCEW president, is editorial page editor of the Star-Tribune in Minneapolis, Minnesota, E-mail [e-mail]