Professional workshops inspire.

All the right-branching sentences, parallel constructions, and properly punctuated possessives in the world won't save your editorials if they lack a voice--and a soul. Too many editorials are missing both these essentials.

That was the message--part lamentation, part exhortation--from Paul Greenberg, Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial writer and self-described "amateur theologian" of editorial pages. Greenberg's comments, the keynote to a morning-long series of writing seminars that ranged from foot-stomping grammar tips to a "Who Wants to Read the Second Paragraph?" show of hands, offered a sobering look at the current state of newspaper opinionizing.

"I'm afraid we've lost our way," said Greenberg, the editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Newspapers that possess only "assorted policies, not basic principles" have little of value to say to their readers, he said.

"The editorial page is the soul of the newspaper," Greenberg declared. "What is the state of your newspaper's soul?"

Not so good, he suggested. The blandness, the sameness--the soullessness--of many editorial pages is in sharp, sad, contrast to "those days when newspapers stood for something." Even if they stood for the wrong things, he said, "they were something."

And editorials written by committee just make matters worse.

"Something terrible happens to the writing when it becomes consensus--and collectivized. It loses the sound of the human voice, the murmur and traction of old friends talking over a drink."

Far better to encourage that voice, said Greenberg and a panel he invited to respond to his remarks. Disdaining daily (or even weekly) editorial board meetings, Greenberg has just one rule for his staff, he said: "Come in in the morning and write what interests you that day."

Rich Aregood, by contrast, does hold daily meetings of the editorial board at The Star-Ledger in Newark. But those meetings, he contended, stop well short of dictating how individual editorials should be written.

"We'll argue about a topic until we agree on one central point," said Aregood, another Pulitzer winner for editorial writing, "and then I turn loose a writer who can make that point. If you can make that point, I don't care how you get there."

"Turn loose," you'll notice, with its twin hints of independence and pent-up energy; a writer needs both to produce a powerful editorial. Or as Aregood, waxing briefly poetic, had put it earlier: "really giving a rat's ass about what you're writing about."

Imagine yourself at the other end of the process, agreed Paul Akers, editorial page editor of The Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and the answer becomes clear.

"I ask myself the question, What things do we most like to read as readers? Almost without exception they are things created by individuals and not groups, whether novels or public-policy books or sports columns."

And one more reason to write well, and to produce editorials that sound like someone, from somewhere: Frank Partsch will have a better time in hotel rooms.

When journalists travel, Partsch reminded the crowd, they buy local papers. When Partsch, the retired editorial page editor of the Omaha World-Herald, travels and hunkers down at night to read assorted editorial pages, he's distressed to feel he could be almost anyplace--and it's not the sameness of the rooms. Most editorials, he's concluded, could be "clipped out and interchanged and nobody would notice. They have no discernable clues about their history and character, their principles and tradition."

Can that change? Can editorial writing become, once again, worth reading? Yes, Greenberg and his colleagues implied--but only when editorial pages stop clinging to the safety of homogenized expression of homogenized opinion.

Good writing is "inherently risky," Greenberg said, urging his audience to "aim for a masterpiece every time." Even a failed masterpiece, he argued, is "so much more interesting and worthwhile than another routine editorial.

"At least it's trying to say something."

Readers demand interesting fare

Passion was in fashion earlier in the day as well. So was organization. So was precision. The three seminars that preceded Greenberg's appearance displayed a trio of writing coaches with an assortment of tips designed to get editorial writers--or any writers--past the rough spots.

"Count on lots of sympathy" was nowhere on the list.

"Readers don't give a damn" if you're having problems turning out your latest opus, warned Kathy Norton of the Poughkeepsie Journal. "They don't care. They just want our work to interest them, to entertain them somehow on some level."

And when, try as you might to be interesting or entertaining, your topic for the day just doesn't stir your blood? Look elsewhere. Not for a different topic, but for people who care about it. Even--especially--if you have to leave your office to locate them.

"If you're short on passion yourself," Norton counseled, "go find someone who has lots of passion, and make their words your words." Readers "don't care if you've lost your passion--they just won't read what you write."

For similar reasons--readers with a busy schedule and a roving eye--Norton stressed the importance of headlines and opening paragraphs. If the headline and the lead aren't compelling enough to make a reader want to read the second paragraph, she said, it really doesn't matter what else you've written.

"You have a great line in the middle? Who cares, if nobody gets there?"

But the biggest downfall of editorials, according to Norton: "There aren't enough real people in them."

"Fill your editorials with real people."

'We writers are too isolated'

The problem with talking about writing, John Sweeney admitted, is that we don't know how to talk about writing.

"We do not have a shared vocabulary," he said. "We think we're isolated creatures. We all think we're alone."

We're not alone. There are patterns, said Sweeney, long-time writing coach at The News Journal in Wilmington, Delaware, and founder of the Wilmington Writers Workshop. Patterns in how a writer writes, and in where a writer stumbles. Recognizing those patterns, and a writer's specific strengths and weaknesses, is the key to becoming "your own writing coach."

Sweeney provided a multi-step guide to making that transformation, with the writer of a piece focusing, in sequence, on:

* Audience

* Idea

* Reporting

* Focus and organization

* Clarifying

But should a problem arise at any stage in the process, Sweeney advised, "go back one step"--that's probably where the problem began. Having trouble focusing your information? There may still be some holes in your reporting. Having trouble knowing when to stop reporting? You may not have nailed down the central idea. And so on, up and down the ladder, until it all fits together.

"It's a craft," Sweeney emphasized. "It's not magic."

The fundamentals still count

The question was whether editorial writers who have been working and socializing late into a Friday night would actually get up early on a Saturday morning to talk about grammar.

And the answer, amazingly enough, was, "Absolutely." A larger-than-expected crowd turned out only hours after sunrise to have Dick Hughes, the editorial page editor and writing coach at the Statesman-Journal of Salem, Oregon, help them mind their lays and lies.

Taking no chances, Hughes quickly had the weary wordsmiths on their feet for "punctuation aerobics," getting them to stomp, tap, point, clap, shrug, and shout at the various punctuation marks and to notice the different impact each one produces.

From there, Hughes led the group through a review of common errors in punctuation and usage. He encouraged due regard for the active voice and for parallel phrasing. ("I get goose bumps when I see great parallel structure," he said.) He also highlighted the hazards of homonyms and blew the whistle on certain non-existent words that have somehow snuck--sorry, sneaked--into common parlance.

Above all, he called for clarity, for directness, for simplicity.

"Don't get so complicated. Two sentences are better than one."

NCEW member Rick Horowitz is a syndicated columnist, TV commentator, and writing coach based in Milwaukee. E-mail [e-mail]