and the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the Association of
Opinion Page Editors persevered and held its 14th annual conference at Penn
State University on Oct. 18-20.
About 25 people attended the event, down from past conferences. But the
smaller-than-usual gathering created an immediacy that provoked valuable
discussions of opinion and public policy issues. And it apparently motivated
Penn State football coaching legend Joe Paterno to win his first game of the
year.
The festivities started Thursday evening at the Nittany Lion Hotel with Penn
State University Communications Dean Doug Anderson and Bill Mahon, director
of the Department of Public Information, welcoming the organization back to
its birthplace. The Penn State officials not only staked a claim to having
the second biggest football stadium in the country, but the largest
university communications department in the world. These accomplishments
dwarfed the otherwise impressive statistic that Penn State students annually
consume nearly two tons of Lucky Charms cereal at campus dining halls.
On Friday morning, Penn State assistant journalism professor Eve Munson
opened the proceedings with her graduate students' analysis of seven op-ed
pages. They analyzed a month's worth (January 2001) of commentary from the
Baltimore Sun, Buffalo News, Detroit News, Los Angeles Times, Newsday, Palm
Beach Post and Philadelphia Inquirer. Apparently, students misplaced some
pages of the San Francisco Chronicle, so it was excluded from the sample.
The 16 graduate students, a third of whom were international, were impressed that
almost two-thirds of the columns were on national topics. They had expected
the pages to be more parochial. When the pages did delve into local and
state issues, the analysis team thought they were well done. The team was a
little disappointed that the pre-Sept. 11 newspapers concentrated on
international issues only 15 percent of the time; however, they noted that
the Los Angeles Times was the only newspaper that devoted a large commentary
to Osama bin Laden before the hijackings.
They thought the pages were wonderfully illustrated and accessible to
readers. They liked pages that created dialogue, such as letters to the new
president, pro-cons and round-ups of different opinions.
The students were disappointed that only 23 percent of the 689 columns
analyzed were written by women. One editor noted that the low number could
reflect a low number of commentary submissions by women, since that editor's
newspaper receives 30 percent of its commentaries from women and publishes
the same proportion. Professor Munson argued that the low number could
actually be worse, considering that the count could be inflated by, say,
running Ellen Goodman several times. This would mean less diversity of
female voices.
The students also thought the voices in the pages were "too hegemonic,"
reflecting the views of people who already have power. They preferred to see
more commentary from people outside of the power structure. An example they
gave was a commentary on a digital harbor for minorities.
The assembled op-ed editors indicated they would be interested in a more
detailed follow-up analysis at next year's Fort Worth conference. Professor
Munson conceded that it was uncertain whether students had analyzed the
pages in a consistent manner. And none of the students was present to answer
The Friday Nuts and Bolts session, hosted by Eric Ringham of the Minneapolis
Star-Tribune, concentrated on how op-ed page editors coped with the Sept. 11
terrorist attacks. For both Noel Rubinton of Newday in New York and Marjorie
Pritchard of the Boston Globe, the early days of the crisis are now a blur.
At the beginning, editors sensed that commentators and readers needed to
wallow in their feelings about this historic event. The Philadelphia
Inquirer even started a web page where it posted more than 140 poems about
the incident. But after a week or so, editors agreed that the debate had to
shift out of first-person where-I-was narratives and back to issues. One
editor observed that it helped occasionally to give columnists guidance and
have them use their unique expertise in following the post-Sept. 11
controversies.
Perhaps one of the more sensitive issues for op-ed page editors is handling
the mail since the anthrax attacks. Latex gloves have become mandatory
equipment for some editors or their mail openers. Still, Ringham flagged a
silly piece of advice from a Post Office directive: "Please don't taste or
On a more insightful note, E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post Writers Group
gave a luncheon talk that assessed the post-Sept. 11 political situation and
whom it would favor. There is a "new way of doing politics," namely
bipartisanship, that will be difficult to discard even after the sense of
crisis has passed, Dionne argued. We can see this when politicians as
disparate as liberal Democratic Rep. Maxine Water of California and
conservative Republican Rep. Bob Barr of Georgia join to oppose Atty. Gen.
John Ashcroft's security proposals as being too restrictive on civil
liberties.
Whether the Democrats or Republicans take advantage of this new spirit of
community depends on President George W. Bush, Dionne said. He could become
a Dwight Eisenhower-like president who governs in security-conscious times
with the aid of Democrats. But the evidence is mixed that Bush could evolve
into this kind of leader, he said, adding "I hope we do whatever we can to
keep this new spirit of seriousness in the country alive."
In the spirit of generating this new kind of community, Philadelphia
Inquirer Editorial Page Editor Chris Satullo outlined how editorial pages
can practice civic journalism that works. The Inquirer, with the help of
$100,000 from the Knight-Ridder chain, created a discussion among
Philadelphians for the 1999 mayoral race about what the issues should be. A
column by Satullo generated 500 volunteers for a series of forums,
supplemented by 300 city dwellers that a foundation discovered while doing a
separate project. The newspaper rented halls and paid moderators to shepherd
the discussion of issues into more concrete terms than politicians use, said
John Timpane, Inquirer op-ed page editor. The editorial and op-ed page pages
printed the citizens' conclusions and held the candidates accountable for
addressing these citizen priorities. And the op-ed page published a variety
of commentaries from the citizen participants.
Philadelphia may not have changed much, Satullo concluded, but residents are
having a much better discussion about city issues. And the op-ed page has
tapped a wealth of new, informed commentators. It is a model that other
editorial and op-ed pages can pursue on a smaller scale, Satullo insisted.
The theme among the back-to-campus speakers who followed is that uncertainty
rules when it comes to climate change and decreasing obesity.
The media need to be careful about portraying weather forecasting as a
precise science, said Penn State climatologist Paul Knight, who is a senior
forecaster for the New York Times. If meteorologists have trouble
forecasting two to three days into the future, people should be extremely
wary of climate computer models that try to predict global climate change 50
to 100 years into the future, he said. "I would not change my family's plans
over the next 10 years based on computer weather models," he quipped. What
hasn't been appreciated, he said, is that there is 10 percent more rain now
than in 1900, which could have huge implications if the weather suddenly
becomes drier.
There also are no easy answers in trying to deal with nutrition and an
obesity epidemic, said Penn State nutrition chair Barbara Rolls, the author
of the best-selling "Volumetrics." "If surgery (to shrink) the stomach is
the best method we have, it shows how little we know about changing
behavior," she said.
What nutritionists do know is that small changes are critical to losing
weight. If someone reduces their diet by 500 calories a day, he or she will
lose one pound a week. People can do common-sense things such as reduce
their consumption of red meat, increase their eating of high-fiber,
high-water foods such as vegetables and fruits, and decrease their
consumption of "energy-dense" selections such as alcohol and crackers.
It is easier to lose weight by reducing your eating than by increasing your
exercise, Rolls said. Forgoing one ounce of potato chips saves 150 calories;
to burn the same amount of calories in physical activity, you would have to
run 1.5 miles in 15 minutes.
On Saturday, Richard Burr of The Detroit News hosted a second Nuts and Bolts
segment that focused on op-ed challenges. Editors discussed what the
identity of an opinion page should be. The general agreement was that a page
should serve as a forum of ideas that balances over time. Many editors
pooh-poohed the notion of achieving perfect balance everyday. They preferred
allowing pages to be flexible so they can be provocative and unpredictable.
Editors also discussed how to assess the validity of commentaries on highly
scientific or technical subjects.
A subsequent panel of Gene Foreman, Penn State communications
professor and retired managing editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer, and
Michael Waller, publisher of the Baltimore Sun, took a broader look at the
newspaper business. They agreed that the industry needs to adjust to the new
reality of higher profit expectations and should beware of wallowing in
nostalgia. When was the great newspaper Golden Age? Newspapers have more
resources now than they did in the 1970s, Foreman observed.
Waller argued that newspapers have improved in many areas. But instead of
letting other media set the standards for newspapers, he said, newspapers
should do what readers like best: Give them substance and story telling.
Don't centralize the news, which results in a loss of individuality and
creativity. And Waller characterized the movement to reduce the editorial
and op-ed pages as "a helluva mistake." A newspaper has to stand for
something, he said; if you fill newspapers with pro-cons, he said, you might
as well not have an opinion page.
At the AOPE business meeting, the board discussed recruiting for future
conference sites and elected its new officers. Since the organization needs
to deal with travel budget cuts and recruit new op-ed editors, it expanded
its board to include five at-large members along with the four officers. It
also passed a rule that the op-ed editor sponsoring the next conference
are: Richard Burr, Marjorie Pritchard, John Timpane and Carolyn Lumsden,
with John Allison, Jewel Reilly, Bob Davis, Leslie Seifert and David Beasley
as at-large members.
Vicki Fong of Penn State announced the AOPE awards, which honor fantastic
work by op-ed page editors and writers. The Phil Joyce Award, recognizing
contributions to AOPE, went to John Allison of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Phil Joyce and Carolyn Lumsden agreed to create criteria for the Tom Wellman
Award for Community Service.
Next year's conference will be in Fort Worth, Texas. But outgoing President
Noel Rubinton had an appropriate reflection about the Penn State gathering:
"The circumstances of our meeting were unique and so will be the memory of
this conference."
Fall 2002 Newsletter