Friday, April 08, 2011

I just want to respond to my "anonymous" blogger friend, who's wondering where his/her earlier comment went. I have no idea, but given the nature of what we're talking about here, I definitely don't want to look like I wiped it out or anything, so here it is again:

Why is it that when I post anonymously I'm treated as an scribing scumbag, but when some awful, nasty, ugly, vicious, ignorant, intemperate, uninformed anonymous bile is posted in a newspaper as an editorial it is treated as scripture?
Let us say - for the sake of this discussion - that you, Jody Paterson, have decided to apply for a job as an entry level position at one of the big corporations. Let us also say that you are fully qualified to do the job and the local office has approved you. The local office passes along your particulars to the corporate level for routine final approval, but corporate turns you down. Why?
 You never find out, but the truth is that corporate ran an automated background check of your online activity and found out that your views did not match theirs. Had you been writing anonymously Big Brother would not have known what you think. 

Just a couple points on that comment: First, there are many good reasons for posting anonymously, so it's not the anonymous part that I have a problem with. But when the sole reason people do it is to hide from their own vicious, ugly words, that's when it bugs me. 
As for newspapers, editorials are supposed to represent the paper's opinion, not that of the person who wrote it. In the old days, it would have been the publisher's opinion, but times have changed now that publishers are rarely the owners and editorial positions are now decided by the "editorial board," which usually consists of the publisher, the managing editor and the editorial-page editor. The person who actually does the writing is just the one who puts it all into words.  
If editorials were "signed" by the people who wrote them, they'd be more like columns rather than the opinion of the newspaper overall. That's why they don't have any name attached to them.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks

Anonymous said...

I just read (yet) another asinine anonymous editorial... ARGH!


editorials are supposed to represent the paper's opinion [...] editorial positions are now decided by the "editorial board," [...] If editorials were "signed" by the people who wrote them, they'd be more like columns rather than the opinion of the newspaper overall.

At best this is a weak, and specious position.

Jody Paterson said...

It could be that it IS a "weak and specious position" but it's just the way it is in newspaper land. You could start your own newspaper that featured signed editorials to combat that, but in the meantime this is the way it is in the industry.
However, you can go to the top of any editorial page and see at least who the editor is, and in the TC's case, you can also see who the writers are. So unless the editorial appears under the headline "Other voices" - which means it's been lifted from a different newspaper in the chain - then it was written by either the editor or one of the writers. So you can take up issues directly with them, as that's only two writers in the case of the TC.