Editor’s note: The IRS prohibits all nonprofit 501(c)(3) news organizations from endorsing candidates. This includes Memphis Fourth Estate Inc., which is the 501(c)(3) nonprofit that owns The Daily Memphian.
Ken Paulson nailed it.
As a former newspaper editor with an impeccable reputation in daily and academic journalism circles, Paulson is sounding the alarm about the increasing demise of editorials in local newspapers.
It is a demise, he rightfully argues, that is costing newspapers their influence and diminishing their relevance in their respective communities. I would add that the demise contributes to partisan division, allows corruption and self-dealing to mostly go unchecked and stunts a community’s growth.
Call it hyperbole if you wish. But Paulson is not known for theatrics. He has been around the journalism block more than a few times. So when he raises concerns about the industry we both love, I tend to listen. And this assessment is spot on.
“The long history of newspaper editorials may now be about to end, a casualty of both changing news values and economic pressure,” Paulson wrote in an essay under the headline, “How America’s newspapers lost their voice.” It was published July 20 in The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent, academic and research-based online-news organization.
Paulson’s summation was simple, direct and disheartening: “Editorials are quickly disappearing.”
As an example, he noted the sharp decline in editorials nominated annually for the coveted Pulitzer Prize from 101 entries in 1995 to just 25 this year. The decline is so steep, the Pulitzer board has now lumped institutional editorials into one category with other opinion journalism.
He also cited the courageous editorials published by Hazel Brannon Smith, owner of the Lexington (Miss.) Advertiser, that strongly criticized the White Citizens Councils and other racist groups during the turbulent days of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s.
Paulson is a former editor-in-chief of USA Today and has also headed newspapers in Wisconsin, Florida and New York. He currently is director of the Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro and has been a good friend and journalism ally for nearly 20 years.
He’s seen and edited thousands of local editorials during his career, from the momentous to the mundane. And he laments the impending loss of what both he and I agree is the soul of the newspaper.
“Editorials and (political) endorsements have largely been jettisoned, along with the men and women who used their institutional knowledge to look out for their communities,” Paulson wrote. “Some news companies have concluded that local editorials aren’t in their interests.”
Some even said readers frequently cited editorials as reasons for canceling their subscriptions. “Speaking truth to power was affecting the bottom line,” he wrote.
All this is personal to me. My last full-time newspaper job was as editor for opinion and editorials at The Commercial Appeal, a position that was as liberating as it was impactful.
Before taking the job, I spent 32 years as a reporter, assistant city editor and senior-level editor at four newspapers, reporting and overseeing news coverage in the most objective way possible. And I enjoyed every role.
But the move to opinion journalism allowed me to engage with the community in a much deeper and more personal way. As the person in charge of the CA’s editorial board, which at one point consisted of six full-time veteran staffers, including an award-winning cartoonist, I never thought it was our job to tell readers what to think. We just wanted them to think.
We took seriously our mission to opine daily on behalf of the institution — a venerable newspaper that in one form or another since 1841 was as much a part of the growth, successes and failures of Memphis and the Mid-South as any other local institution, public or private.
We invited citizens to join the board. And we developed a mission statement, published on the editorial page every Sunday, that pledged to be an advocate for social and economic progress, ethical behavior, efficient use of public resources and an improved quality of life. We also promised to act independently and fairly, celebrate community successes and be the forum for other ideas and opinions of public interest.
We also embraced the newspaper’s time-honored role of thoroughly vetting candidates for local, state and national office, interviewing many of them and endorsing those whom we concluded were the most capable and qualified.
Other newspapers, large and small, had already abandoned the practice of endorsing candidates. But we believed, rightly or wrongly, our work was instructive and helped to build trust among readers despite the criticism we received from those who did not appreciate our choices.
These days, the CA, the Daily Memphian and other local news organizations, including broadcast outlets, do credible jobs of offering short to moderate profiles of candidates. And both daily newspapers welcome guest columns. But local institutional editorials are nonexistent. And endorsements have been ceded to others, including political operatives who do it for profit.
A Commercial Appeal spokesperson told me in an email statement that the paper’s philosophy regarding opinion content “reflects what our readers and subscribers value. Our Sunday Viewpoint section is directly curated from reader feedback, community submissions and invited columns, ensuring a mix of local, state and national voices that reflect Memphis’ full spectrum of perspectives.”
Believe me, I get it. The days when local newspapers viewed their institutional role as influencing, as well as informing and entertaining, are long gone. Full-time editorial writers were among the first casualties of the financial pressures and staff reductions newspapers started facing nearly two decades ago.
But I cannot help but believe newspapers contributed to their own decline in relevance when they opted to no longer provide reasoned institutional opinions that, as Paulson put it, challenge the powerful, call for reform and demand accountability.
“You can agree or disagree, but the end result is that you gave it some thought, which is what the editorial writer intended anyway,” Paulson wrote.
He believes the practice can still survive if local newspapers commit to publishing their own editorials on an as-needed basis or by creating a community editorial board of civic-minded citizens, something we did at the CA nearly 20 years ago.
Unfortunately, I am not as hopeful. The editorial die has been cast. And newspapers that have abandoned institutional opinions are not going back, which, to Paulson, means the permanent loss of most of their influence — and all their soul.
Otis Sanford is a political columnist, author and professor emeritus in Journalism and Strategic Media at the University of Memphis.
This article is republished by permission from the Daily Memphian under a Creative Commons license. See original article.
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