My own paper The Nashville Tennessean, which I read daily, used the “No True Scotsman” fallacy just last week in an unsigned editorial, telling the reader that “surely no voter” can be for a 700-mile long border fence.

Anyhow, great blog you have!

/Alexander

I know you know about RealClearPolitics — how can you not mention it in your post?

http://www.realclearpolitics.com — that’s what we DO! We take the top 21 editorials every day, most by people a few by editorial boards - provide a filter, and that’s our home page.

I agree that people should sign the corporate editorials, but we’re doing it — and people must like it as we did about 10MM page views last month and we’ll do over 12 this month — and the mainstream media gets our value as we have deals with most of them in some form or another. I think you should take another look at the site and tell us how it fits in.

There are those that want to believe that in life, skill and good works are all it should take. That…

Now, would I love it if the best syndicated editorialists had blogs, you bet.

Mark Steyn has a website. Every week he answers with much time and effort his mail. But, then, he’s a more of a populist and has never been formally trained with the us vs them journalism school attitude.

Without the unsigned editorial we would never get a glimpse into the political leanings of a news organization, what agenda they are advancing and what is being under-reported or omitted. We need that information.

You start by saying that we don’t need Editorialists and end by calling for a change in the Editorialists ways – in a way, the proliferation of blogs just shows that we are craving more editorialists, not less – but we want more transparency, more conversation, more choice, etc.

Just tell them:

“What you have been historically paid to do, thousands of bloggers are now doing for free, and their product is at least as good as yours. The long term implications are self-evident. So buy yourself a copy of “The Rainbow Parachute” and start figuring out what your next career is going to be.”

Bart, IMO Jeff’s position is that since opinion is now a commodity, why waste scarce resources to produce it? Especially since “comment is free:” Why pay for it?

[snark] Used to be we relied on the editorial page to tell us what to think, so we didn’t have to. [/snark] Now we’ve discovered that the folks writing the editorials often aren’t that much smarter (or more knowledgeable) than the first fifty bloggers listed at TTLB.

Rick: “…the days when a knowledgeable respected journalist, with a long-running commitment to the community, could call the mayor or school board or county commission on the carpet for corruption or stupidity with an authority greater than a lone citizen sounding off to his email list are, in most places, long past.”

I wish my local paper hadn’t “outsized” all of its “knowledgeable, respected journalists.” All it has left are new j-school graduates whose lack of understanding (and institutional memory) of the community they’re trying to report on is endlessly astounding. (And the bungee-boss management provided by the out-of-town ownership is no better.) They have no “authority.” The emperor has no clothes. Might as well recognize it.

As for the suggestion that editorialists make room for other voices, who do you think fills the rest of the opinion pages with letters and columns? Editorial page editors (like me) take our responsibilities as forum facilitators as seriously as our own opinions. Most bloggers feel no obligation to make room on their sites for diverse opinions. Editorial page editors do.

For those who wish editorial writers would just go away, consider it granted. Look beyond the major metros to the small town dailies and weeklies. They’ve been dropping their editorials, and their editorial pages, for the last 25 years. Some still carry letters to the editor, but the days when a knowledgeable respected journalist, with a long-running commitment to the community, could call the mayor or school board or county commission on the carpet for corruption or stupidity with an authority greater than a lone citizen sounding off to his email list are, in most places, long past. Editorials, editorialists and editorial pages are already dying, early victims of the withering of the newspaper industry. Feel better?