Balancing act

Letters from the editors

Even these days — amid covid and computers — the occasional handwritten note comes through the mail. Each one is a little pleasure, like unexpected pieces of candy. Some sweeter than others.

The latest, however, wasn’t signed, so it’ll not appear on our Voices page. Our editor on the right side of this section has her standards — and nothing anonymous is allowed. But our correspondent had to get some things of his/her chest, and did so. We’d like to address some of those things, and possibly win back our friend’s subscription.

Our correspondent said many of our opinion writers are biased.

Well, actually, that’s how we like it. Over the years, we’ve seen so many opinion pieces in newspapers that were completely unbiased — and completely boring. The whole point of opinion is to have an opinion.

The biggest problem we’ve seen in American newspapers today is so much opinion is not opinion but news analysis. The best opinion pieces have bias—so much so that the writer is adamant about his position, and tries to convince you to see things from his point of view. Maybe even change your mind! Wouldn’t that be something in the year 2020?

An opinion section with no bias? You might as well have a cake with no sugar.

The New York Times has been taking the op out of the op-ed section, but we don’t want to do that here. (The best opinion in the national newspaper of record can be found in its news columns.) Instead, we’d like to give folks a cross-section of real partial stuff. At least in the opinion section where it’s allowed. The news columns have different editors, and different standards and policies.

Which brings us to another correspondent, who actually did get a letter printed. She said John Brummett writes negative columns, so why don’t we offer a counter opinion to that old lefty “at least once a week?”

How about more than once a week? The Voices page prints columns by Dana Kelley, Bradley Gitz and — several times a week — Mike Masterson. They aren’t exactly left-leaning.

And the editorial page provides readers with syndicated columnists like Walter Williams, Cal Thomas, Bret Stephens, Hugh Hewitt and Victor Davis Hanson. To suggest that this section only publishes liberal columnists and doesn’t balance with starboard-leaning opinion would make some of our friends on the left laugh out loud. Or grunt. They have a hard time laughing.

(See? We’re at it again.)

We hate to brag — oh, who are we kidding? we love to brag — but we think we do a great job of balance, if we do say so ourselves. It seems, however, that many readers want only columnists and editorials and cartoons that agree with their views.

And there are other newspaper and cable networks that will give them that. But that is not us. We are going to publish both liberal and conservative columnists. Depending on the day, we try to pick the most interesting.

We truly believe that the best chance for our readers to get at the truth, the best ideas, and a thoughtful consensus on a variety of topics is through the free market of competitive ideas. This school of thought is at least 500 years old, going back to that old German monk Martin Luther.

We ground our policies on centuries of progress in free speech and freedom of expression, regardless of what other media outlets are doing today. Not only that, but we label it all clearly. Even restaurant reviews and sports columns are labeled “opinion” in this newspaper, so as not to confuse our readers.

But opinion — and biased opinion at that — is an important part of the newspaper, as long as it is clearly separate from the news columns.

We’ve found that opinion makes the opinion section more interesting. You’ve read this far, haven’t you?