Editorials are a dying species

This past week we were in Aberdeen for the annual South Dakota NewsMedia Association convention, where news media outlets (now both print and online) come together to share stories, share ideas and learn new tricks of the trade. And if you haven’t read the story yet, the Chronicle cleaned up in the awards portion of the event, but that’s not what this editorial is about.
No, this editorial is about, well, editorials. Toward the end of the conference, longtime Freeman Courier owner Tim Waltner presented a seminar on opinion writing, at the outset of which he bemoaned what he sees (and the industry sees as well) as a decline in editorials such as these in our local newspapers. Fewer and fewer newspapers have editorials on their opinion pages anymore, and that, Waltner lamented, is a shame.
We agree with him.
Yes, it’s certainly easier not to have an editorial. There is zero risk in not having an editorial. In fact, when Waltner asked for a show of hands of those who did not have an editorial in their newspaper on a weekly basis, he asked people to volunteer reasons why that was the case. The answers were predictable, but don’t hold much weight. One of the most popular reasons for a lack of editorial is simply that people don’t want to rock the boat. By taking on issues in your town, your county, etc., you risk alienating people who are on the other side of the issue. “I don’t want to upset people” is a much too common of a refrain. If an advertiser does not like the paper’s stance on an issue, will they pull their advertising? We certainly hope not, but having a strong editorial presence runs that risk. Waltern said he felt that is a risk worth taking, and we couldn’t agree more.
Waltner pointed out the dying of editorials began with Gannett Media Company, which owns many newspapers across the state. Gannett moved away from running editorials (not to be confused with opinion columns, such as Nathan Steele’s just to the right of this) because Gannett bosses said they didn’t feel people wanted newspapers “telling them how to think.”
No, they certainly don’t. And the purpose of an editorial isn’t to tell people how to think about a topic, Waltner pointed out. It’s simply to get people to in fact think about the topic presented. You can agree. You can disagree. But it never hurts to hear the other side of an argument, even if you don’t agree with that opinion. A good editorial should identify the issue, present the newspaper’s voice on the issue, identify the arguments on the other side of the issue and then issue a call to action on whatever is being written. If you don’t agree with what is written? Well you have every right to write a letter and tell us how we missed the mark. That’s how that works.
We certainly hope you can at least appreciate why we have editorials, even if you don’t always (never?) agree with them. We feel they are a key part of a good newspaper, and it’s something we plan to continue. Read it, and think. Agree. Disagree. That’s why it is here.