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One morning about six weeks ago, we climbed out of bed, put on our bathrobe, put a kettle of water on our stove and made ourself a pot of coffee. Then we sat down at our computer and wrote an editorial piece about how we felt about the Columbia County Commissioner candidates this year. When we were done, we took a shower (it was completely innocent) and then we got dressed, grabbed our stuff, walked out the door, got into the driver's seat of our car and drove to work.
After our editorial was published in the October issue of this newspaper, we received a lot of reaction to it from people in our community, both positive and negative. Some of those whose (mostly negative) reactions we got also took us to task for not signing our name (names?) to the piece. Not only that, they complained, but it wasn't even clear if it was one person's opinion, or that of several people. "How are we supposed to know whose opinion that was," they asked, shaking their fingers in our face. "Whoever wrote that is obviously a lily-livered chicken (chickens?), since they didn't even have the guts to sign it!"
What could we say? When we wrote that editorial, we certainly didn't feel like it would make us look chicken. Quite the opposite. We tried to explain that, in the world of journalism, it is standard practice for a newspaper to express its official editorial position in the plural tense (also known as the editorial "we") and for its editorials to be unsigned.
In larger newspapers, an editorial board of three or more people meets to decide the editorial position of the paper. One or more members of that board will do the actual writing, and, after everyone is in agreement with it, the piece will be published on the editorial page, neither signed nor in the first person. It represents the editorial position of the entire newspaper. Those of you who are still skeptical might want to look at any issue of the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin. Along the left edge of every editorial page you will see an opinion piece, unsigned and in the plural tense, which represents the U-B's editorial opinion.
In the case of Blue Mountain News, each "Comment" piece that has appeared in this paper so far, including this one, has been written by the editor (that scoundrel), whose name appears in the masthead below. While each opinion has been primarily that of the editor (and all complaints should be directed his way), other staff members have had the opportunity to review those opinions before they were published and, so far, nothing that has been printed has received strong objection.
We're glad that many of our readers have responded to our editorial opinion pieces, both favorably and unfavorably. And we encourage you all to continue to respond, and to express your pleasure, or displeasure. But please understand that the format and style of those editorials follows standard journalistic practice, and no one at Blue Mountain News is trying to sling mud anonymously. It's easy enough to discover who we are.
As we write this, it's early morning and our cup of coffee is still hot. As soon as this paragraph is finished we'll shut down the computer and pet the cat. Then we'll begin getting ready for work. Hopefully it won't be too crowded with all of us in our little bathroom.
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