Last Updated: November 09, 1999
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Explaining ourselves
Editor columns are a great way to explain what we do
and why; if you write such a column, we’d like to know about it
In his president’s address at the San Francisco ASNE convention, Edward
Seaton gave us a simple but vital piece of advice. In headline form: We
must explain ourselves.
That, he said, is a big piece of the solution to newspapers’ credibility
problem, or the perception that we aren’t credible, which has the same
effect.
“Each of us should be explaining to readers why we act the way we do,”
he said. “Explaining reasons for our practices will soften a lot of the
negative perceptions. We need clear statements, in writing, about what
constitutes acceptable journalistic practice.”
He added that editors should “explain what we do and why we do it, what
we believe and why we believe it, why we appear to like stories readers
don’t like.”
That’s one good reason for editors to talk to readers through the pages
of their newspapers. Others are to put a human face on the people who work
in our piece of “the media” — popularly and wrongly scorned as a monolith
these days — and to differentiate ourselves in terms of responsibility
and credibility. And the most important reason to talk to readers in print
is to urge them to talk to us.
That last is the message I try to find a new way to impart every week.
I do an editor’s column whose self-imposed rule is that it has to contain
the words “newspaper” or “The Times.” The column isn’t for ego (though
it does result in people introducing themselves to me in the grocery store),
and isn’t to provide readers with my expertise on the macroeconomic implications
of the euro. It is to set a tone, to tell readers (and, not incidentally,
the staff) over time what we’re about. It is to introduce new features
or sections, and tell readers why they’re important. It is to supplement
major series or project efforts, and tell readers why we’ve made the special
effort. It is to explain ourselves when we’ve done something controversial,
and to ’fess up, frankly, when we’ve made a major mistake in judgment.
I started doing such a weekly column at another paper, when I became
a top newsroom editor for the first time. I was new in town, figured it
was important for me to introduce myself and what I was trying to do, and
hoped I could sustain the column for perhaps six months before running
out of material. It’s been nine years now, and I haven’t run out of material
yet. Stuff happens.
Obviously, this isn’t unique or original. At a relatively few papers,
ombudsmen or reader representatives write such columns. At other papers,
editors do as I do.
Over the next few months, by way of encouraging by example, we’ll round
up some such columns for The American Editor. We hope to show that it’s
doable, useful and important. It’s kind of fun, too.
If you do an editor’s column that speaks to the readers about newspaper
matters, please send along an example to share. If you know of an editor
too modest to nominate his or her own column, let me know about that, too;
I’ll do the arm-twisting.
Send your columns to: Joe Distelheim, The Huntsville Times, P.O.
Box 1487, Huntsville AL 35807-0487 or joed@htimes.com.
Distelheim is editor of The Huntsville (Ala.) Times.
