Editorials: not just for policy wonks.

I have long been accustomed to thinking of myself as a reporter who came lately to opinion writing. As of last spring, though, I've been writing editorials for more years than I worked as a reporter. At age 38, I guess, I've become an old-timer.

It wasn't supposed to be this way. Had I followed the usual journalistic career arc, I would have spent several decades covering politics, state or local government, maybe with a stint in an overseas bureau or a graduate fellowship program, before settling into the contemplative idyll of the editorial department, presumably sometime after my 50th birthday.

My c.v. bears none of this. I went from intern to reporter to feature writer to editorial writer in fairly rapid succession. What political reporting I did came sporadically as part of my general assignment duties; my legislative reporting experience was occasioned almost incidentally by my stint as an education writer. Advanced degree work? None, I'm afraid. International postings? That's a laugh.

This month's Masthead Symposium suggests that a lack of conventional journalistic experience may be no impediment to quality opinion writing. I'll go a step further and say that, if no former political reporter is hired onto an editorial page staff anywhere in the next 10 years, our craft will not only survive but will also be better off as a result.

Editorial pages are supposed to reflect the whole of human experience; our beat is all the known universe, with license to wander into the unknown as well. Yet for too long, the typical editorial page has had a face only a policy wonk could love. We analyze every wrinkle and tic of an electoral campaign; we obsess over the implications of a minor policy change at City Hall or an obscure personnel shuffle in some far-flung foreign capital; we consume whole forests to chronicle bureaucratic minutiae that in the end affect only a minority of our readers, and them only marginally.

Meanwhile, opinion pages are too often oblivious to what's really news in the lives of everyday people. When was the last time our editorial columns weighed in, from an individual rather than a policy level, on the affordability and availability of child care? The upward spiral in the cost of a college education? The weather, when it didn't involve floods, fires, or hurricanes?

Our commitment to diversity in the profession must go beyond race and gender. If we're serious about serving our communities in the broadest sense; ff we want to appeal to readers of every age and demographic; if we want to remain relevant in an era of electronic information crafted to specific interests, we'd better look for ways to bring an ever wider range of perspectives to our page.

Otherwise, we might as well hang it up. And though I may be an old-timer, I'm sure not ready to retire yet.

This issue also offers comprehensive coverage of NCEW's 1998 convention in Ottawa. Of the many high lights of that gathering, the most gratifying for me personally came at the first night's reception at Parliament's Hall of Honour. That's when Randy Brown of The Wichita Eagle told me how his newspaper, spurred on by articles in last spring's Masthead, recently adopted a policy of signing its editorials.

There's no greater compliment to me and the many others who produce this journal than to hear that we've sparked an idea, produced a change, or merely prompted a debate.

The spring issue's symposium, I hope, will be similarly provocative. It's tentatively titled "Publishers and other problems from on high," and I'm hoping it will generate a lot of candid talk about conflict with our bosses - not just gripes and worries, but workable strategies for any editorial writer torn between principles and a paycheck.

If you'd like to contribute on this topic or any other, contract me at [e-mail]