Unbounded misrepresentation: editorial writers speak for institutions.

In the world as it once existed, an editorial had particular marks by which it might be known.

It was institutional. Thus, it represented the views or comments of not just an institution but also its owner or investors--people who were willing each day to exercise leadership in the community even at the risk of putting their investment on the line. This characteristic of an institutional voice constituted a tie to the community, its prosperity, and its quality of life.

It was considered. The institution, from the top down, had a point of view. Editors and editorial writers consulted with publishers. An effort was made to achieve consistency over time, thus presenting the community one voice, among all other voices, that could be relied on as a touchstone.

It rose or fell on its record of accuracy and sound judgment.

Of course it was presented without signature. An institutional opinion with one person's byline is an oxymoron.

And it is true that editors often did no fresh reporting. Some editors follow the philosophy that the editorial should be a logic-driven outgrowth from known facts. Others, of course, are frustrated by the lack of detail they get from the news side and thus break news on their own. Both approaches have their merits.

Critics of editorial pages who have never gone inside an editorial page office, perhaps including Jarvis, toss off our function as "telling people how to think." I have never heard an editorial writer claim to be doing that. We try to bring facts and arguments to the fore, based on our institutional platform and the fact that our sole occupation is (or should be) thinking and writing. It is a misstatement, as others in this thread have noted, that we exist to trumpet our own opinion and stifle or disrespect all others.

I have deep personal concerns about what seems to be inattention, among some editorial pages, to sound thinking and clear writing. If we are losing readers, it's not because of an insufficient amount of white space or display type but rather because of an insufficient percentage of intelligent, stylishly stated text in our institutional opinions. Such inadequacies as pointing out the obvious, vacillating, and understating (or overstating) the point of view have never attracted respect, and they aren't about to start.

But this is a matter entirely separate from the utterances of the blogging-is-the-new-journalism people. In a nutshell, editorial writers speak for institutions; a blogger speaks only for herself. Her online opinion is indistinguishable from a shout in the crowd, and the posts proclaiming agreement no different from other shouts in the crowd.

Certainly shouts in the crowd can have some effect, and there's a danger that they may crowd editorial writing from the stage unless the practitioners of the craft elevate editorial page writing and thinking (as well as accommodating the public's changing needs in an era of technological change).

But a blog entry is no more an editorial than is graffiti. Few editorial pages would stoop to the caricaturing of a target and then attacking the caricature. But that's what happened here. Jarvis's attempts to force a comparison, so that the one might replace the other, are rooted in unbounded misrepresentation.

(Editor's Note: This opinion piece first appeared on the NCEW listserv on September 27, and was written in response to Jarvis' commentary.)

Frank Partsch is a retired member of NCEW. He formerly served as editorial page editor of the Omaha World-Herald. E-mail [e-mail]