Editorial Writing in U.S. Newspapers

3:00 P.M. EDT

Real Audio of Briefing

MR. PRINCE: Good afternoon and welcome to the Washington Foreign Press Center. We are very pleased to be able to present today a discussion on editorial writing in American newspapers. We have with us Lynnell Burkett from the San Antonio Express-News and John Needham from the Los Angeles Times.

And welcome also to journalists at the Foreign Press Center in New York and the Foreign Press Center in Los Angeles.

Mr. Needham will start and then we'll go to Ms. Burkett and we'll have some Q&A time.

MR. NEEDHAM: I'll open by telling you how the newspaper decides what its opinion is on the issues of the day. At the LA Times, we have 11 editorial writers: one in the state capital of Sacramento, two physically in Orange County, California, and then the rest of us in Los Angeles, where we also have three to four editors at the table.

We usually start by an individual saying, "Here's what I think we should write about, here's what I think we should say, and here is why." And this opens up the subject then for others to say, "Well, have you considered this? Have you considered that? I think you're wrong because X, Y or Z." On some occasions, the editor or one of the editors will send out a memo beforehand saying here are the three big topics of the day, I think somebody should address these. We should talk about, for instance, the Terri Schiavo case and living wills. We should talk about the latest development in Darfur. We should talk about what Governor Schwarzenegger wants to do with the redistricting in California.

And then we pick up that discussion from there, sit around the table, and if we convince the editor that what we want to say should be the newspaper's opinion, one of us goes off and writes it. I specialize in foreign editorials, so I'll go off and write the foreign affairs editorial, submit it to the editors, they'll look through it, they'll see if I've left something out, if there's something that's in there that they don't want in, they'll send it back with their suggestions or their notes. And then I resubmit it, it goes through another set of editors who check it for accuracy, and the next day it's in the newspaper -- or a few days later on because some of them we peg especially for weekend use.

And I'll go to Lynnell.

MS. BURKETT: Thanks. We have a very similar process. Not as many people on our staff as the Los Angeles Times has, but a very similar process. And one thing we think about is, where is our greatest influence to be felt? And obviously it is from the local area because we are the, probably, the one opinion source -- the single newspaper in that town, and so the one opinion source on local issues. So we always try to think about what needs to be said within our local area.

We also are the third largest newspaper in the state, so we feel that we have considerable influence in state affairs. So our next question probably is, you know, What's happening within state government or within Texas that we need to be commenting on? Since we're so close to Mexico, we almost give similar status to Mexico as we do to the state because, as a border state, we have a lot of interest in what is happening in Mexico, a lot of our readers do as well, and I think we have some influence in terms of what we say about that.

We also, though, obviously focus on national and international. A lot of American newspapers, especially in the late 1990s, went through a stage where we were very locally focused and we did not pay, I think, sufficient attention to foreign affairs and what was happening there. 9/11 -- one thing that happened was it was our wakeup call that we must pay attention to the rest of the world, we must understand what the rest of the world is thinking and we, once again, I think, became outwardly focused in terms of our concerns.

Another thing we have found in the last few years is that because of the internet, that even though we are a newspaper located in Texas, that what we say, because of our websites and because of sharing of information through the internet, does have influence both nationally or internationally, depending on what we write about, because there are groups that monitor particular issues and that pay attention to those kind of things.

Another thing I'd like to point out is that the actual editorials are only one part of our -- the kind of venue of opinion writing that we're concerned about in our department. As John was pointing out, every day we're concerned with what the opinion of the newspaper is, what we have to say. The second really critical part is the letters to the editor, the conversation that comes back to us. And third, then, the other views, the op-ed page, and it's very important that that page reflect a whole lot of different views and especially views other than those that we reflect on our editorial page. So we try to think about the whole conversation that is going on on our page, not just what we have to say but what is the reader going to learn by reading our opinion, opinion of other letter writers and then the various op-ed people that we have contributing opinions to our page on a variety of topics.

And another thing that we've talked about, and John and I have different situations -- I know, what is the relationship with the newsroom? What is the relationship, then, with the publisher of the newspaper? Our department in San Antonio is totally separate and apart from the newsroom, both physically -- we're in a different building -- and the editorial page editor reports directly to the publisher and the news editors. The editor of the paper is not involved in setting editorial opinions. And it is a philosophical decision that the news operation should be totally separate, that the objective is different, which is providing, you know, objective viewpoints, and we are the opinion sources. So we work directly with the publisher, who is a member of our editorial board, in determining the opinion of the newspaper.

I think John has a little bit different situation there.

MR. NEEDHAM: We work a little bit differently. We are physically separate from the main news operation, which is one floor above us in the same building, and our opinion section is right next to the publisher's office. However, the editor of the opinion section reports both to the editor of the newspaper, who's in charge of the news, and the publisher, who's in charge of everything. Years ago, the publisher at the time, which was probably seven publishers ago, was -- well, they're all on the editorial board, but he would have the editorial writers meet in his office once a week. We don't do that anymore. I don't know if it's become cumbersome or it's not the choice of the last number of publishers we've had.

How it generally works in practice is a list of the editorials we're going to write for the next day and what we propose to say goes out to a number of people, including the editor and the publisher, so they know, if they choose to read it, what we're going to say. And on a major topic -- who are we going to endorse for mayor, what do we think about the top issue of the state if it's a referendum, say, on taxes or something like that? The editor will go to the editor and publisher and say, “Here's what we're going to say.” Because you don't want your publisher to be standing at a community meeting and have somebody say, "Why did you say this today?" And he didn't get a chance to read the paper that morning and he doesn't know it and, worse, it's something he disagrees with or something that runs counter to the opinion of the newspaper, to the financial benefit of the newspaper. You don't want to propose a tax on newspapers. I mean, that makes no sense. We'd be against something like that.

So you want the newspaper publisher to be fully aware of what is going on. And many newspapers follow Lynnell's paper's example of just report to the publisher, keep the editor completely out of it. That way there's no interplay between news and opinion. We do ours a little bit differently. I have not seen any practical problems with that myself. But I can definitely see the argument for having a straight reporting line just to the publisher and leaving the editor out of it.

MS. BURKETT: I'd like to second what John said in terms of having the publisher in the loop. I would say the number one rule, if you hope to survive as an editorial page editor, is no surprises for the publisher.

MR. NEEDHAM: Yes. Yeah.

MS. BURKETT: And we do as John suggested they used to do, which is we meet I'd say weekly with the publisher, and then if there is a major issue we would either discuss that, if we saw it coming up. We meet with our publisher on Monday afternoon and one of the questions always is, well, what's happening this week? As we look ahead to the week, what might be the major things that we might be wanting to comment on, and then we meet as a group every morning to say, what's in the news this morning that we might need to comment on in addition to the things that we may have seen in the first of the week. But that would be a really important rule for all of us.

Another thing we were both going to talk about briefly because, again, we came to this room very different ways, is how we got in to editorial writing.

MR. NEEDHAM: Yes.

MS. BURKETT: Do you want to talk first since you're sort of the traditional model, I guess, right?

MR. NEEDHAM: Yeah, I am. Well, I'm trying to think. Of the 11 editorial writers, I would think probably all of us except one came out of the newsroom, and if not at the LA Times then somewhere else. I worked for a small newspaper, I worked for the UPI news agency wire service for 14 years, including seven and a half years as a foreign correspondent both in Delhi and Tokyo.

I joined the LA Times as a reporter, then I became a feature writer and after ten years or so, I guess roughly, I was asked if I wanted to be an editorial writer. I thought it over, I thought it sounded good and I did. So I had then to make the adjustment from no opinion in your stories, straight what are the facts, what are the possible implications of these facts and who says so?” -- I mean, not me unless it's an analysis, but who am I calling and who can I quote on that -- to having to get an opinion into an editorial because a recitation of facts is something you get on the news side anyway, and we are pushed to have an opinion and to couch it so it makes sense because, in the final analysis, it is not my opinion, it is the newspaper's opinion, and I do have to remember that. And if I start to forget it I have an editor who will very quickly remind me that, you know, “Thanks very much for your input, but what should we as a newspaper say?”

MS. BURKETT: My path was that after I got out of journalism school, there was a bit of a recession in the newspaper industry, so I went to a community college to teach journalism. And I thought, well, I'll do that for a couple of years and then I will seek a job at a newspaper. Seventeen years later, I decided that if I were going to go to a newspaper, I'd better get with it. But I will say this, I loved teaching journalism and I taught basic reporting and editing and mass communication and worked with students on the student newspaper. There were five of us who were faculty members on that.

And at that point, I mentioned to one of the local newspaper editors that I was very interested in doing this and he, within the year or so, had an opening for a deputy editorial page editor. It was a fairly small operation. And I did the very politically incorrect thing of saying, "You really think I could do that?" I thought later, this is not your ideal job interview. But he said, "Yes, because I think you'll bring new eyes to situations. You won't have, like, covered it ten years before so you already have preconceived ideas of what the way a situation is." So he said, "I think you can bring reasoning and reporting skills and bring new eyes to this."

And it did turn out very well, but I would say that in addition to my journalism training, I think the best experience I ever had was as a debater in high school and college because, as a debater, you're trained to debate both sides of an issue. And one hour you may be taking the affirmative position and the next hour you may make the opposite argument. And I think being able to do that is a good skill for an editorial writer because there's hardly any subject that's black or white, it's all one way or another. And so it helps to come at it and understand that there are two or more sides to an argument and then you make the stronger case for the side that you're arguing, but you also acknowledge the other position. So that, I think, was very helpful. But I went directly to editorial writing and did not have long experience in the newsroom at that time.

Dale.

MR. PRINCE: Thank you for that excellent introduction. Before we go to Q&A, I do want to mention a program we have tomorrow on a somewhat related subject, the practice of journalism. At 2 o'clock, we have a briefing on accuracy in the media and we will have Todd Leventhal, an expert in misinformation, and Dante Chinni of the Project for Excellence in Journalism.

Okay, let's go now to some questions. Who wants to start? Yes, sir. Please wait for the microphone. Of course, identify yourself and your organization, please.

QUESTION: I'm Hiro Aida with Japan's Kyodo News and thank you very much for your wonderful presentation.

I'm just wondering, you know, my question is about a kind of local political or intellectual environment and editorial writing -- the relation between these two. For example, I think you know, it's a little bit -- is a tired question maybe, but in the case of LA Times, you know, over the last several decades, you know, it used to be, I think, very conservative paper with Chandler family.

MR. NEEDHAM: Yes.

QUESTION: And maybe due to the local political or intellectual environment there, and, well, I don't know, maybe that might be involved in publisher's opinion or power. And but now, I think, your paper is considered to be a rather liberal paper. How did that happen? You know, was that only due to the change of the publisher's attitude or that the local, you know, demographics changed or intellectual environment -- change of the intellectual environment or political environment? Did that affect the opinion making of your newspaper, as you said, "We as a newspaper, we have this opinion." How does that kind of change happen, for example, in your newspaper or your San Antonio newspaper, if that kind of thing happened?

MR. NEEDHAM: At the LA Times, I would say you're right, it was a very conservative newspaper and it routinely made the list of the ten worst newspapers in the United States throughout the 1960s. And the change to make it a good newspaper and a fair editorial page that did not have knee-jerk reactions was the result of one man especially and then another man. The one man was Otis Chandler, a part of the Chandler family who became the publisher in 19 -- I'll make up the year, 1960 I think, somewhere around there -- and started to change and, at first, emphasized the newsroom. We opened national bureaus, we opened foreign bureaus, we demanded rigorous reporting, fair reporting to both sides, no shading news in favor of the local Republican candidate.

And as the years went on, Otis hired very good editorial page editors, including a man named Tony Day, who had been a foreign correspondent. I suppose, and I don't know what Tony's personal politics would've been, but the page became either more moderate or more liberal, depending on how you want to define that. And, you know, a woman's right to choose, later opposition to the war in Vietnam, strong support for civil rights. Those types of stances.

So I would say that in the case of the LA Times it was more those two men and a continuum since then that it would be from the local political atmosphere or the intellectual elites in the area.– We have a pretty broad base of intellectual elites. We have fairly conservative academics at some of the local colleges, we have other liberals at other colleges and then you have academics who are just straight professionals who can tell you what has happened. –We don't, but if we ever needed to call Hollywood and get a view for something, I mean, obviously you'd get 99 times out of 100 the view from Hollywood is going to be liberal. But that doesn't influence the editorial page.

MS. BURKETT: I would say from our paper that the publisher is the person that sets the tone and can to the extent that, and it's usually a "he," that he decides to do so. And some newspaper chains have more influence than others on, say, an individual newspaper. Our newspaper is part of the Hearst Corporation, which does not exercise any influence on the editorial policy other than the decision on who to hire as a publisher, which indirectly helps decide that. But the publisher is the key person, both in the instance he cited but I would say generally as well.

MR. PRINCE: Let's take a question now from New York, then we'll come back here. Go ahead, please, from New York.

QUESTION: Yes. My name is Andrew Visconti. I'm with L'Espresso Publishing Group in Italy. I'm interested in the composition of your editorial boards. Are you looking for diversity in terms of, you know, cultural, racial, religious backgrounds? Or that's kind of irrelevant?

MS. BURKETT: We definitely hope to have somewhat of a diverse editorial board. For example, the population of San Antonio is 66 percent Hispanic, so it would be very important to have a Hispanic representation. There's still a major issue, which John and I were discussing a little bit early, in terms of gender balance. And I would say within the last 10 to 15 years, women have begun to make their way onto editorial boards, although if you look at particularly op-ed pages, they by no means enjoy parity with men in that operation.

In terms of, say, political diversity, I know that that we consider it important to have people who can represent different points of view, but at the same time you want a collegial group where they aren't at war with each other. But you want a group that when you sit down to discuss an issue, people can bring different viewpoints to the discussion. You don't want to just echo each other on what you're saying. You want to have a healthy debate to then have the best thinking come out of the group.

MR. NEEDHAM: Yeah, I'd agree with that. Diversity is important across all lines: racial, gender, age. Since somebody my age is going to look a lot differently at an issue than somebody who's 25 or 30 and is listening to different radio stations, different music, is far more computer-adept than I would be, and has a whole different list of sources of people that she will talk to.

And the best discussions around the editorial board that produce the best editorials are the ones where everybody takes part with a different point of view and has listened to -- one person has listened to conservative talk radio, another person has listened to NPR, someone is a moderate Republican, someone is a conservative Republican, then you have liberals and the back and forth, as long, as Lynnell said, as long as it's collegial and in the end it produces an editorial. You don't, at the end, want to say, "Well, we can't agree so we're not going to write anything." That doesn't work and you can't have blank spaces on a newspaper. You need the editorial.

MS. BURKETT: I think 20 years ago or so, editorial pages were sort of a retirement positions, that people who had worked for a newspaper and been reporters for maybe 20 years or 30 years, got "promoted" to the editorial page where they spend the last 10 years. And since at that time they were mostly men, you got editorial boards with very little diversity and a very staid kind of page generally. And I think in the last 20 years, probably that's changed considerably and editorial pages, as a result, have become more interesting.

MR. NEEDHAM: Let me go back one time to when I had opened on how we make an editorial, and I'm sure Lynnell does it the same way. We don't just sit there, read something in a newspaper, sit down and write an editorial on it. The fun part is the reporting. You see something in the newspaper, you call somebody up, you say, “What do you think about this?” You read something else on the internet, you call -- I mean, in my case, I call overseas, I'll say to somebody, “What's going on there?” I'm fortunate, the LA Times has bureaus around the world, they're good with bureaus. We have first-rate foreign correspondents. But the guy based in Delhi may not have gotten to Sri Lanka last week and I see something on the wires that's good on Sri Lanka, so I know somebody here at a think tank whom I knew when she was an ambassador in South Asia and I was out there, so I'll call her. Or I'll call Sri Lanka.

And the local editorial writer who's writing editorials on LA City Hall is doing the same thing. She's calling somebody she knows in the mayor's office. She's calling somebody who hates the mayor and she is doing her own reporting to try to decide how to shape it.

I know what Lynnell says is right. Years ago, if you went into retirement, it was a nice, easy job. You went in, you saw the newspaper -- too many editorials read like it you just saw it in the newspaper, wrote “my opinion: “this was terrible yesterday” and then you went home. That doesn't work at a good newspaper and it should never work.

MS. BURKETT: One thing I would say in addition to that is that this is the one place that we do have a good connection with our newsroom. We use our reporters sort of as resources because if they have spent a lot of time on an issue, say, an investigation and that kind of thing, you want to use the resources you have within the newsroom as well as all the other sources that he mentioned as well.

MR. PRINCE: Okay. Let's come back here, to the front row, please.

QUESTION: Kuk Ki-Yon with Segye Times, Korea. You touched upon a little bit but how frequently are you making direct contact with newspapers and then how do you spend weekdays as an editorial writer? Thank you.

MR. NEEDHAM: I'm one of the very few people you find in Los Angeles who takes mass transit. I take a bus in in the morning, I read the New York Times going in in the morning, I read the Los Angeles Times when I get to the office, I read the Washington Post online, the Wall Street Journal comes in, the Financial Times comes in, I get some idea of what I think I should write about or should be.

I'll call around -- because of the time difference and because I'm in work between 7 and 7:30, I try to reach people in New York and Washington before they go to lunch, pick their brains. Go into the editorial board meeting at 10 in the morning, discuss what's going on, come out if I have to make more calls. I'll make those calls at UCLA, USC, Claremont, the local Pacific Council, the local universities to have a good idea, go back in one more time to consult with an editor and say, things have changed, it's not what I thought it was this morning, here's what it is. Or I'm more sure than ever that this is the position we should take on the paper. And then I'll sit down and write it.

MS. BURKETT: The additional thing that I would say is that we have a lot of editorial board meetings, especially in the afternoon, where people come in from both local and state groups and it's a major source of information. We like to have an open door where anyone can call the editorial page editor and say, if there's an issue in the news locally, they want to come make their case to the editorial board. So I would say on many major local issues, we will have heard from one or more groups and meetings. We hear from them constantly on state issues, especially when the legislature is in session. And then visiting people from, you know, national and international issues as well. And so many afternoons of the week, we have one or more meetings with people who want to come in and make their case to the editorial board.

MR. NEEDHAM: We're like that, too. Yeah, that's a very good point. And that is helpful to us, especially for me when we get visitors from overseas, a chance to find out what their views are and what's going on in their country.

MR. PRINCE: Yes, right here in the middle, please.

QUESTION: Natasa Briski, Pro Plus, Slovenia. If I can draw a parallel with politics, I wonder, would you agree that editorial writers are a kind of speechwriter for the newspaper? And another question, I wonder what happens, since this is an opinion, what happens if you have to write or endorse something you don't necessarily agree with?

MS. BURKETT: Well, I think that's an interesting parallel that I wouldn't have thought of as being a speechwriter. You are the one who conveys the opinion of the paper so there possibly are some parallels to that.

Now, on the question of something you disagree with, I would say that no one on our editorial board, for the most part, has to write about something that they strongly disagree with. There are some things that I could mildly disagree with that I might not mind writing about. If it's something I feel very strongly about, I would ask to pass on that particular one.

Now, I have written a few editorials that I fairly strongly disagreed with. Until recently, I was the editorial page editor and I would say a couple of times on Presidential endorsements I wrote editorials that I did not necessarily agree with, but I wanted to be the person to frame the arguments. Even though I disagreed with it, I didn't want to delegate that duty to somebody and I wouldn't like the way they said it.

(Laughter.)

MR. NEEDHAM: The speechwriter I had not thought of, but that is a very good analogy. Yeah, that's a very good comparison. I have not had to write anything that I disagreed with. I'm lucky and I hope my luck holds out. I don't know what I would do. I like to think I'm a man of great principles; I also have a mortgage. (Laughter.) I don't know.

Many years ago, we had a publisher who wanted to endorse a certain person for Governor, so we did. There was a revolt on the editorial page. Everybody disagreed with it. The editorial page editor at the time, whose job was directly tied to being in good with the publisher, tried to calm it down. And for the only time that I can remember, there was -- we endorsed Pete Wilson for re-election for Governor because -- and then on the op-ed page, the deputy editor of the editorial page said this was a stupid endorsement and here's why. And I thought it gave great credit to the newspaper to do it. And then a week later, the deputy editor of the editorial page was moved into a different position. (Laughter.)

But it happens. At least they did admit that there was dissent. Today, of course, with the internet, dissent would be known within 30 minutes. Dissent would be known before the editorial appeared. Somebody would leak it to a blogger and it would be all over. I mean, that's how much our jobs have changed.

MR. PRINCE: We have another question from New York. Please go ahead.

QUESTION: Hi. My name is Gabriel Plesea and I'm a reporter for Romania Liberia, a daily newspaper from Bucharest. As you may know, after the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe, there's a period of transition, in my own country and some other Eastern European countries, and that transition implies a shift from, let's say, party-dictated topics and a strong censorship on the part of the higher ups in the party as to what was written.

Now, some of the mentality of those days persist in the new generations. I'm not talking about the old ones. It would be very difficult to change the mentality there. But some of the new people, journalists, they would be influenced by the old habits and they would recourse to what's called "self-censorship."

In other words, they would avoid getting into topics or write things that would be contrary to the editorial staff, to the directors of the papers and so on, based on some money, some ads that they get sponsorship from the government and also from firms.

I suspect that in the States this is not the case but I'm just asking if there are instances where this might occur.

MS. BURKETT: I think you always have to be careful not to censor yourself. It can be a very subtle thing, such as I can think of one instance at our paper where there was an editorial position that we put to the publisher that he disagreed with, and we did not run that one but from then on we became hesitant to push on that particular topic. And I think you kind of need to fight that tendency. So I’m sure the tendency is not as strong here as it might be in your country, but I think we always have to fight the tendency towards self-censorship.

MR. NEEDHAM: Yeah, I would agree with that. I'm not aware of my newspaper not writing an editorial for fear of offending a group or an advertiser. And I can't think of anything specific. I wish I could, I'm drawing a blank right now. We have written one or two editorials on issues that I thought if they didn't hurt the economic policy of our newspaper, they certainly didn't help it.

Well, one example is, we tend to think there should be a lot of diversity in media ownership and that kind of goes against our newspaper, which thinks the FCC should drop all its rules on owning newspapers and television stations in the same market because the Tribune Company which bought my newspaper and a bunch of others five years ago, I mean, that's their position; they would benefit economically.

So we haven't come out and said, you know, our owners are wrong on this because, after all, we're expressing the will of the owners, but we have said we need as much diversity in media as possible.

MR. PRINCE: This may have to be the last question. We're almost out of time.

QUESTION: Mvemba Dizolele with UPI. A question on international front. I want to know how you decide on the coverage of regions and topics. I'm particularly interested in how Africa has been sided for so long and we tend to cover the crisis, which perpetuates the stereotype, which eventually even affect negatively our foreign policy, I mean, in U.S. foreign policy, because people don't seem to know what's been happening for so long.

How do you deal with that?

MR. NEEDHAM: We do, I will admit, tend to be crisis driven. We don't always write editorials on good news. And I don't know -- I'm trying to think specifically on Africa. On the other hand, we try to paint a fair picture of what we think is going on in one specific location at the time.

If we think that Mugabe is going to steal the elections, we'll say that. If we think the African Union is doing a good job of pulling together peacekeepers and becoming a regional organization that we hope will be for the benefit of all the governments, we say that. If we think Uganda is doing a good job on AIDS, but Thabo Mbeki is not in South Africa, from our viewpoint, we will say that.

We try not to wait for crises to drive what we say, but sometimes we don't have an awful lot of choice. For the last three and a half years, I have written so many editorials on Afghanistan and on Iraq that I have not had as much time to do editorials on a number of other issues that I might like to do. I just haven't.

MS. BURKETT: I think that news tends to be crisis driven and what we do tends to focus on crisis. I think we are particularly bad about that in the coverage of and what we focus on in international affairs. And the other weakness, I think, there has been a blind eye toward Africa for too long. And I guess the things that we're really focusing on editorially, and I'm probably not speaking for a paper like the size of the LA Times so much as, you know, the smaller regional papers. You know, when you think of coverage of Africa, we focus on coverage of the AIDS crisis and we focus on Darfur right now. And I think that it's a legitimate criticism and something that we need to be very conscious of.

MR. PRINCE: Thank you very much. Unfortunately, we are out of time. We have another briefing here in a few minutes and we have to make some preparations.

I would like to thank Lynnell Burkett and John Needham. Thanks to the journalists for coming.

MR. NEEDHAM: Thank you all.

MS. BURKETT: Thank you.