What would really be new and enlivening at this depressing juncture in the
history of American editorializing would be a return to the old: the old
standards, old competencies, old revelations - not in order to replace
whatever's new today but to lend it some saving perspective.
Here's a word from the past: The late Grover C. Hall Jr. wrote editorials
for the grand old Montgomery Advertiser in an era when Southern newspapers
led all the rest because they had character, and characters. I've got an
editorial of Mr. Hall's framed on my office wall. In it, he pointed out that
editorial writers have got the grandest job in the world. So why not write
like it?
In the end, what matters is what always mattered: the words, the words, the
words. And what's really the matter with editorial writing is a loss of
faith - in words, in the power they represent, and in our power to use them.
Or to let them use us. For the best thought has an irresistible power of its
own.
The surest symptom of our malaise is the various cures recommended for the
sad state of the American editorial. Some are familiar panaceas, the kind
that have never worked but are rolled out every year as if they were brand
new. For example, somebody always suggests that we start signing our
editorials. Yes, we're talking about the same editorials we write, rewrite,
edit, talk about, and then have our publisher approve - if the publisher
didn't suggest the editorial in the first place. So how many names would we
have to sign at the bottom of each editorial? At that rate, the byline would
be longer than the editorial.
More to the point, the whole notion of a signed editorial is a contradiction
in terms. For then the editorial would no longer represent the newspaper's
opinion but an individual's. Why not just write a signed column and be done
with it? Start signing editorials and the idea that the newspaper has an
opinion, a personality, a tradition and continuous history of its own would
become just a formality.
Then there are those who believe that, to restore this patient's old
vitality, what's required is a technological fix. Maybe turn the editorial
column into a community forum, a kind of electronic bulletin board. (In that
case, what would Letters to the Editor be for?) Or transform the editorials
into blogs. But that's not writing, it's talking.
There ought to be something premeditated, even with malice aforethought,
about committing an editorial. If the reader just wanted to talk, or read
instant opinion, all he'd need do is eavesdrop on cell-phone conversations,
God help him.
The essence of an editorial is that it's the product of an editor. This
fascination with technique - how to set up a blog, how to get on the
Internet, how to do this or do that - is not a good sign. I think it was
Raymond Carver, the short story writer, who said that, when a writer wants
to write about technique, it means he's run out of anything to say.