The Daily Northwestern’s editorial board perceives a right – if not a duty – to editorialize on the Forum page twice per week. The Daily’s editors grandstand on the Forum page in the tradition of national editorial pages featuring opinions from specialists within and without the paper’s staff. The purpose of editorializing is to offer a uniquely informed perspective on an issue that will contribute to community dialogue. The question for The Daily and its readers is whether this editorial board’s opinions matter enough to merit publication.
This question arose in this paper’s editorial board meeting two weeks ago. The Editor in Chief asked section editors what the coming week’s editorials should say. The debate not only explored what issues the paper should explore, but also what editorials should seek to accomplish. Should The Daily present questions to stimulate a broader discussion, or must it represent a decisive opinion? The debate ended without resolution.
The editorial board seemed so concerned with its “responsibility” to opine. When I claimed that an editorial should raise a question about what the Teach for America employment numbers says about the Northwestern student community, the larger board insisted that editorials must express an opinion. But the frivolity of this paper’s most recent editorial on the Dean/Santorum debate illustrates that these articles might not be useful at all.
The editorial’s ‘opinion’ was concentrated at the top, where Dean and Santorum each received a grade of “check” for their debate performance based on criteria that the author never fully explains. The rest of the article was a mere recapitulation of the debate; there was no clear argument beyond an assessment of the debaters’ performance as “adequate.” The purpose of this column is not to mock one editorial or to throw a fit over this paper’s editorial policy; it is instead to highlight The Daily’s editorials as an example of a deeper question: when do student opinions matter?
The Daily’s editors think that their opinions matter enough to write editorials. Student columnists trust the importance of their opinions enough to have them published each week beneath fear-inspiring caricatures of themselves. Student leaders write guest columns and letters to the editor as purported experts on the issues that their groups confront. I am perhaps the guiltiest, burying my opinion in a critique of others’ right to express their opinion in the public space. Our expression is arrogant, but does this mean that we should stop?
Student writing has a role on campus, but it often risks self-indulgence. The same self-indulgence that lines the Forum page has clogged the airwaves and the “series of tubes” on-line. Let’s strive for more data, less published opinion. When this paper feels an obligation to publish editorials every week, it seems focused more on generating copy than contributing a new perspective to an ongoing dialogue. Student opinion should teach us something that was neither obvious nor superfluous. When The Daily publishes editorials to fill space, they distract from interesting and constructive student opinion.
There is a middle ground between solid reporting and classic editorializing. The New York Times calls it news analysis; others might call it linkage. The purpose is to string together discrete but related stories surrounding a particular topic and begin to raise questions about the broader narrative that these stories combine to form. The Daily’s specialty is understanding the landscape of student discussion; this paper’s editorial board becomes valuable when it can weave together disparate narratives in order to build reader comprehension of what is happening in our community and what it means.
Public editor Ben Armstrong is a Weinberg senior. He can be reached at [email protected]
