Fall 2003 (Convention Special)
	Photographs by Vicki Fong

 

 

CONVENTION ROUNDUP

By David Beasley
AOPE secretary

At noon on Oct. 2 in bucolic Storrs , Conn., cab drivers were dropping off oped editors in front of the Nathan Hale Inn with only enough time to stash luggage in the lobby before boarding a shuttle bus to the main event, lunch with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

 

The 16th annual conference of the Association of Opinion Page Editors attracted 39 participants from the U.S. and Canada. It started a few hours earlier than usual for Kissinger's appearance. Kissinger arrived on the University of Connecticut campus via a friend's borrowed helicopter. At lunch, he professed that he was heading back to Yankee Stadium for the playoffs.

"I am a huge Yankees fan," he said, a diplomatic faux pas of sorts for the former Secretary of State since AOPE's president, Marjorie Pritchard, is op-ed editor of the Boston Globe.

Kissinger, interviewed by John Zakarian, editorial page editor of The Hartford Courant, said so-called "op-ed diplomacy" by world leaders is relatively new. "I never wrote an op-ed piece while in office," said Kissinger. "I spent a lot of time with journalists to tell them what I was thinking."

The policy of detente with the Soviet Union was motivated, Kissinger said, primarily by the desire to prevent nuclear war.

"You have a moral duty to do your utmost to prevent it," said Kissinger. "I felt, certainly Nixon felt, that we needed to be in dialogue with the Soviet Union." Yet he believed "our resources were so much greater, over time we were likely to prevail," over the Soviet system.

Ronald's Reagan's decision to rapidly increasing military spending in the 1980s , which some say contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union, would not have worked in the 1970s. "The Reagan policies in the 70s would have torn the country apart," said Kissinger. "We were already divided over Vietnam." On the increasing comparison between Vietnam and the current conflict in Iraq, he added, "I don't believe the situation is strictly speaking, comparable."

In Iraq, "We face guerillas, but they have no organized military units to support them, no outside source of aid, no jungles in which to hide." Yet there is a lesson to be learned from Vietnam, said Kissinger: "Once we are engaged, we have got to win."

In Vietnam, he said, "the only winning strategy would have been to cut the Ho Chi Minh through Laos." Laos, he said, was "technically"
a neutral country but the trail area was populated primarily by North Vietnamese troops, with few civilians.

After lunch, editors toured UConn's puppetry program and museum. UConn is the only university in the country to offer three different degrees in the art of puppetry. The program attracts students from throughout the world. During an afternoon Nuts and Bolts session, editors discussed a common problem on our pages: how to make them less boring. The evening was capped by a sumptuous clambake (with lobster included) sponsored by our gracious co-host, UConn.

Friday's session opened with a presentation by UConn associate professor David Yalof, on the future of U.S. Supreme Court.
Recent battles over lower-court nominees such as Charles Pickering are really just a precursor for the larger, looming fight when high-court spots open, Yalof said. Miguel Estrada was being groomed for the Supreme Court and opponents decided to fight the battle early to oppose him, added the professor.

"We are having, right now, Supreme Court nomination battles," said Yalof. "That's what this is all about, laying the groundwork."
He also warned editors that so-called "short lists" for the high court are often meaningless- and that there are "little or no surprises" with Supreme Court nominees - presidents know what they are getting at the time of the appointment.

Wall Street Journal editorial page editor Paul Gigot revealed that "I never knew I had so many friends" until he became editor and started receiving op-ed submissions by the boatload. The Journal gets 500-600 submission a week and publishes maybe 15 of those. Gigot said he is looking for pieces that are "newsy, fresh, ahead of the curve."

On large national or international issues, the paper tries to present opposing views, but that is not the case on all issues, said Gigot, adding "We don't want it to be an 'all things to all people' editorial page."

A discussion on American attitudes about editorial pages and polling followed, by UConn professor Kenneth Dautrich and Lee Miringoff
and Barb Carvalho of Marist College. To view UConn's news media study online: http://www.csra.uconn.edu/UCONN/CSRA/CSRA.nsf/DDOCUMENTS?OpenForm&HUB

Gail Collins, editorial page editor of The New York Times, discussed her new book on the history of women in America and concluded, "The role of American women is to make men behave." She said the Times encourages alternate views on its oped pages.

An afternoon session on oped pages revisited the boredom issue. Oped pages are "An oasis of blandness in a place that is already bland," said cartoonist and columnist Ted Rall. Newsday columnist Maria Cocco said "it is more important to have freshness than balance" on op-ed pages.

The it was on to the Mohegan Sun casino. The head of the the Mohegan Tribal Council, Mark Brown, a former police officer, emphasized that his tribe works hard with surrounding communities to solve problems. Everyone on the panel, which included Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, seemed to agree that some tribes that are seeking federal recognition have a good case, but some do not.

The problem is that tribes have to await their turn while an undermanned and underfunded Bureau of Indian Affairs sorts through documentation on tribal legitimacy one at a time. It took the Mohegans 18 years to get federal recognition, which gave them the ability to start a casino.

And now the important information: winnings and losses at the casino. Here are the results of my informal survey:

"I went to the slot machines with $20 and came out with $115! Hit three bars, then two double diamonds and a bar, and I forget
what else. Whooee." Vicki Fong, Penn State University:

"OK. I lost (playing blackjack), but I lost less than I had been prepared to lose, so I felt like a winner! Overall, down 12 bucks." Alleen Barber
Newsday

"I lost $10." Carolyn Lumsden, Hartford Courant (organizer of the conference)

"We donated about $33 - a quarter at a time - to the slots at the Mohegan Sun." Mary Joyce, wife of Phil Joyce, retired Philadelphia
Inquirer oped editor and founder of AOPE.

On Saturday, humorist Gina Barreca, who has written several books and teaches English literature and feminist theory at UConn, opened the proceedings. She was, in the opinion of some, the funniest presenter at the conference — and perhaps in AOPE history. Her monologue on cultural differences between the sexes — women don't like the Three Stooges for largely the same reasons that they don't laugh at the fart scene in "Blazing Saddles" — was entertaining and enlightening to the dozens of semi-conscious editors.

Next up: Nuts and bolts, starring Richard Burr of the Detroit News. A useful discussion of Robert Novak's outing of Valerie Plame, followed by an extremely useful round-the-room recitation of one good idea each editor had during the year. This was a good opportunity for members to congratulate themselves and also learn about — steal — their colleagues' bright ideas.

David Gray, executive director of SND (Society of News Design) presented a slide show of the best-designed op-ed pages in the world, evoking a lot of "wish we could do that" from around the room and some "glad we didn't do that" as well.

Luncheon speaker David Ignatius, the Washington Post columnist, just back from Iraq, offered a balanced snapshot of Iraq as he found it in September. Baghdad seems to be recovering from its wartime devastation: trash collectors and traffic lights are working, restaurants and shops are open. But just over the horizon, he said, lurks a sense of "genuine menace." A roadside bomb or an RPG attack could happen any time.

Even so, this really was a war of liberation, Ignatius insisted, saying that the majority of Iraqis are still happy to see Americans. One problem, and it seems like a serious one, is that the American occupation leaders are confined to a "green zone" in Baghdad from which they rarely if ever emerge.
Ignatius outlined three debates, rather than just one, that newspapers should be having about Iraq. First is whether the war was justified. "Morally it was a just cause," he said. But there was, apparently, no strategic threat and hence no strategic gain.

Second is why the United States was so ill-prepared for postwar Iraq. "This really was Donald Rumsfeld's war," said Ignatius. "The CIA was largely pushed aside." He said that Rumsfeld's sponsorship of the exile Ahmad Chalabi, and Chalabi's own policy recommendations, turned out to be enormous mistakes. Third, how do we win the peace? If the United States leaves too soon, Iraq will be a disaster, Ignatius said. He also cautioned that Shiite leaders in Iran have a stake in "keeping Iraq festering." A free and peaceful Iraq, he said, would shift the center of the Shiite world out of Iran and back to its traditional home in Iraq.

There were awards and election of officers:
President: Bob Davis, Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Vice President: Lou Ann Frala, Palm Beach Post
Treasurer: David Beasley, Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Secretary: Chris Reed, Orange County Register.

What a conference! Thank you Carolyn. See everyone next year in Philly.
Contributing to this report: Richard Halicks, Richard Burr