Leave ho-hum editorials to 'Foreign Affairs.'

Stick to issues that touch readers' lives and lend themselves to succinct points.

The riddle asks: "If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, does it make a sound?"

I'm not sure, but I am dead certain of the answer to its journalistic corollary: "If you write an editorial and nobody reads it, was it a good editorial?"

No.

Every editorial must not only present an opinion, but also have a reason for being. To expect busy readers in Podunk or Brooklyn to wade through a tome that analyzes, say, the strike by French workers, is not only a waste of time and space; it's downright foolish. What, pray tell, is the point?

And that's precisely the point: Editorials must have one. A clear point, one that readers can both understand and use. Anything less is intellectual masturbation - of which there is far too much in the self-important press, sorry to say.

If the understand-and-use formula is followed, it will lead papers to focus on the core issues that affect the daily lives of their readers: crime, education, jobs, health, transportation. For us, those subjects eat up about two-thirds of our editorial space. I wouldn't have it any other way.

Don't misunderstand. Editorials on foreign affairs and issues matter. Many are absolutely vital, both as a teaching tool for readers not deeply familiar with details of a key situation and to help shape policy.

But too many newspapers often go too far afield. The main reason, I believe, is that editorial pages feel obliged to vent on virtually every big story in the news - no matter the tortured route the stow had to follow to get into the paper at all.

Suppose The New York Times or The Washington Post carries an article from one of its own correspondents from Russia. If they give it big play, their news services will distribute it widely. Then come the wire services, which feel compelled either to report what the Times or Post has reported, or match the stow. Smaller papers follow suit and run some version of it. Then the editorial pages feel the need to weigh in. Ho hum.

This isn't a vote for isolationism or nativism. Indeed, our page has supported President Clinton's decision to send troops to Bosnia, both for moral reasons and to preserve NATO. Over the past two years, we've written perhaps 25 editorials on Cuba and Haiti. Maybe another 15 on Israel. Perhaps 10 on Northern Ireland.

Each was subjected to our litmus tests: Were these issues where we had a clear, useful opinion on a subject that touches our readers' lives? And could we lay out the facts and our point succinctly?

Of course, not every editorial meets all those tests. A big story often cries out for comment, regardless of whether we have anything brilliant to say. Here in New York, for example, we draw heavily from a reader base of the three "I"s: Israel, Ireland, and Italy. Knowing that a slice of our readers cares sometimes leads us to write an obligatory piece.

But we shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking that international policy experts are looking to general interest newspapers to get their read on the latest power struggle in Kenyan politics. If they did, what would "Foreign Affairs" do?

Michael Goodwin is editorial page editor of The Daily News in New York City.