Innovations bring transparency that editorial pages need: changes will disappoint those who wanted a radical departure.

Should newspapers still run unsigned editorials that speak for the institution, taking positions on the pressing public policy debates of the day? Absolutely. Indeed, because of all the "chatter" out there--the deluge of news and innuendo provided by traditional media, the 24/7 cable universe, and the blogosphere--the need for principled, authoritative commentary has never been greater. At a time of vanity-driven celebrity journalism, a deliberative editorial board's positions acquire greater credibility and can have greater impact.

People these days crave absolute truths. Editorials may not quite deliver that, but a good editorial page does provide readers with a filter through which to interpret the news and all that chatter. The filter consists of a coherent worldview and an adherence to certain core principles.

At the Los Angeles Times, we have renewed our commitment to the editorial page. Since Michael Kinsley and I arrived in 2004, we have engaged the newspaper's leadership in a thorough internal (and sometimes public!) discussion of ways to modernize and strengthen this venerable institution. All options were on the table, but the changes we have adopted in the end will disappoint those who wanted a radical departure from the traditional editorial page's form and mission.

The Los Angeles Times will continue to publish daily unsigned editorials that speak on behalf of the institution. Although we assigned a half-dozen pieces to outside writers earlier in the summer, we have decided not to continue with that experiment. All our editorials will continue to be written by board members. That said, we are converting one of our dozen board slots to a three-month "visiting fellow" position to enable us to bring into our conversation foreign journalists, academics, and others.

In terms of the subjects we write about, we are beefing up our expertise in such areas as technology, immigration, and healthcare. And to reinforce the separation of the opinion pages from the newsroom, the editorial page will now report directly to the publisher, instead of to the editor. I should also note that during this period of intense navel-gazing about the edit page's future, we haven't exactly been standing still. Most prominently, we have done a series calling for non-partisan state redistricting, another one calling attention to the ravages of malaria in Africa, and we are campaigning for the mayor to take control of the L.A. school district.

Newspapers generally need to make better use of their websites, and this applies with special urgency to those of us on the opinion pages, given that the blogosphere poses a more direct competitive threat to us than it does to our news-gathering colleagues. As a means of making our pages accessible to readers in more ways, we are experimenting with new online content. Most famously, inspired by the wikipedia, we posted an editorial online on the situation in Iraq and invited readers to edit it collectively. The results were impressive, as hundreds of people took the exercise seriously, until someone posted some pornography and we had to pull the cord. We are still committed to trying more of these wikitorials once we work out all the kinks. Some said we were diluting the power of the institution's voice, but that seems over-wrought. The editorial itself ran on our pages like any other--subsequently offering it up for revision is merely an invitation to readers to interact in a new way with us. We also will be running more letters to the editor on the Web than we do on our page, and hosting more online dialogues between board members and outside experts, along the lines of what Kinsley did at Slate.

Editorial boards also need to be more transparent these days. People do thirst for the authoritative institutional voice, but they also are increasingly wary about taking things on faith. We are going to pull back the curtain a bit to demystify the editorial board. Much of this entails giving our readers opportunities to get to know our impressive board members. To that end, we are encouraging our writers to write occasional, signed "A SoCal Life" pieces on the bottom of the stack, or signed columns on the op-ed page. Board members also can write one signed dissent to an editorial position a year. And we are putting together a program of panel discussions in the community to make ourselves better known.

WIKITORIAL--(weketoreal) n. pl. wikitorials (newspaper jargon ca. 2005)--an unsigned expression of opinion presented by a newspaper, usually on its Internet website, which is modified by readers using interactive Web tools to insert their personal vision of what the editorial should say.

WIKI FOR YOUR THOUGHTS

How do you like the linked editorial? A lot? Thanks! Not so much? Do you see fatuous reasoning, a selective reading of the facts, a lack of poetry? Well, what are you going to do about it? You could send us an e-mail (or even write us a letter, if you can find a stamp). But today you have a new option: Rewrite the editorial yourself, using a Web page known as a "wiki," at latimes.com/wiki.

Wikis are among the newest of the new forms of communication that have emerged on the Web. The simplest explanation of a wiki is that it is a Web page that readers can change. When you go to a wiki, what you see is a page reflecting all the changes made so far. You can also see all the interim versions. Then you can insert or add your own changes. The result is a constantly evolving collaboration among readers in a communal search for truth. Or that's the theory.

It sounds nutty. But the best-known example works bewilderingly well. This is the Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia built on the contributions of thousands of readers (plus some minimal supervision from the host site). Readers are also fact checkers.

To be sure, encyclopedias and newspaper editorials are very different literary forms. Contributors to Wikipedia share in some general way a commitment to accuracy. By contrast, strong disagreement is built into the concept of an editorial. Plenty of skeptics are predicting embarrassment; like an arthritic old lady who takes to the dance floor, they say, the Los Angeles Times is more likely to break a hip than to be hip. We acknowledge that possibility.

Nevertheless, we proceed. We're calling this a "public beta," which is a fancy way of saying we're making something available even though we haven't completely figured it out. A better term might be "experiment". We begin with just one wikitorial. Maybe a year from now a link for "wiki this page" will be as common on the Web as "printer-friendly" or "e-mail this article." Or maybe not.

It partly depends on you. You can help by participating and by avoiding hostile behavior. Wikis can build community, but they also rely on a sense of community. We also count on you to suggest improvements.

Who knows where this will lead? It may lead straight into the dumpster of embarrassing failures.

Or it may lead to a new form of opinion journalism, reflecting the opinions of every-one who chooses to participate.

Reprinted with permission of the Los Angeles Times, June 17, 2005

Andres Martinez is editorial page editor of the Los Angeles Times. E-mail Andres. [e-mail]