The United States is celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, but the real revolution came 13 years later when we created a nation like no other.
The enactment of the U.S. Constitution in 1789 provided for a new kind of government, but it was approved only after the founders guaranteed a Bill of Rights, which included core personal freedoms, including freedom of the press.
Consider that. At a time when newspapers were overtly political and one-sided – George Washington called journalists “infamous scribblers” – that first generation of Americans demanded a free press to keep eyes on the powerful and protect against encroachments upon our hard-won liberties. In turn, newspapers have spent more than two centuries writing tough editorials about public officials and grilling candidates for public office to help ensure their fitness for office.
But those days are largely gone. Some news companies have concluded that speaking truth to power is a bad business model. Editorials and endorsements have largely been jettisoned, along with the men and women who used their institutional knowledge to look out for their communities.
This year the Pulitzer Prizes combined opinion pieces and editorials into a single category because so few editorials were being entered into the competition.
Reasons for decline in editorials
There are reasons for the dramatic decline in newspaper editorials. At a time of intense political polarization and circulation decline, newspapers don’t want to risk alienating any readers. Some have even said they were making the move because readers “don’t want to be told what to think.”
That’s a straw man. Good editorials don’t dictate. They are actually an art form, exploring the challenges facing a community, explaining the factors and then explaining why a particular option might be best. Newspaper editorials have taken on injustice and changed America for the better.
ROI was not a concern when William Lloyd Garrison founded The Liberator in 1831, demanding the abolition of slavery.
Nor was it top of mind for Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who ignited the fight for women’s voting rights as editors of The Revolution, a prominent New York-based newspaper (1868–1872) that served as the official voice of the National Woman Suffrage Association.
Hazel Brannon Smith didn’t hesitate to offend readers when she took a stand against the Ku Klux Klan and police brutality in the Lexington (Miss.) Advertiser, courageous work that earned her the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing in 1964.
There have been countless local editorials on a smaller scale that said what the community needed to hear, even if it’s not always what they wanted to hear. It was always part of the mission of great American newspapers.
‘Guest columnists’ don’t cut it
As newspapers laid off editorial writers, they pointed to guest columnists and “viewpoint diversity,” but it’s not the same thing at all. Opinions by “some guy” are plentiful in our overheated society, but voices of reason from highly knowledgeable institutions that know and care about their communities have never been as scarce.
Granted, there was a time when we may have had too many editorials. As the editor of Florida Today in Melbourne, Fla., I reviewed three staff-written editorials a day, which far outstripped the meaningful opinions we may have had. We would have been far better off if we had written fewer editorials with greater impact.
Those who have phased out editorials in newspapers or never even launched them on digital news platforms will tell you that readership will be modest at best. That’s always been the case. But that subset of a newspaper’s readers will also be the most engaged in the community and in the best position to help address what needs to be done. Editorials will also be read by people in power, who will see their performance critiqued in real-time. Scrutiny like that is essential to democracy.
When news organizations abandon editorials, it’s not like cutting comic strips or canceling a syndicated column. An editorial is not a feature; it’s an obligation.
There are still news operations living up to that obligation in robust ways, but that is not the trend.
Suggestions to revive editorials
That said, there remain ways for news organizations to restore the spirit of editorials in an economical and high-impact model. Some suggestions for today’s newsrooms:
1. Publish editorials on an as-needed basis. They don’t have to appear daily, but if published only when something absolutely needs to be addressed, the community will take notice.
2. Create a community editorial board composed of civic-minded residents with distinct and diverse viewpoints and open minds. Identify the most important issues facing your community and ask the board members to explore them, looking for consensus, but acknowledging legitimate points from all sides. Publish an editorial at least once a month and promote it heavily.
3. Collaborate with any other news outlets in your town to reinstate endorsement interviews. A local politician is less likely to thumb a nose when it’s not just one outlet he’s insulting. Ask the tough questions and leave it to each outlet how to use the end product. That could lead to differing endorsements by different outlets or simply a comprehensive Q&A that the entire community sees.
Any one of these approaches would help reinstate the accountability of public officials at a fraction of the costs once incurred by legacy news media.
News organizations have always had authority, community knowledge, and an institutional identity that personified freedom of the press. News media that no longer embrace those assets inevitably become indistinguishable from every other platform and newsletter.
Now more than ever, news media need to recapture what they’ve been all along, challenging those who abuse their power and pushing back against who would undermine a free press.
That may not be an ideal business model, but it’s exactly what Americans foresaw when they demanded that freedom of the press be part of the Constitution. Some debts are never fully paid.
Ken Paulson is the director of the Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee State University, former editor-in-chief of USA Today, Florida Today, Gannett Suburban Newspapers and the Green Bay Press-Gazette, and a former president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors.
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