How Newspapers Decide : The Making of Editorials: Daily ‘Filtering’ Process

Every weekday morning, in big-city newspaper offices throughout America, editorial writers sit down to discuss what formal positions the papers should take the next day on a wide range of issues.

Robert Asher, an editorial writer for the Washington Post, said these editorial board meetings are a “first filtering process . . . the first run-through against readers. It makes you sharpen your counter-arguments.”

Editorial writers at other papers agree. They revel in the opportunity to sit around for an hour or so every morning, exchanging views and arguing issues with their colleagues--and with the editor of the editorial page.

“Any editorial page is the reflection, the length and shadow of the editor’s personality,” said William Shannon, who wrote editorials at The New York Times for 12 years and has been a part-time editorial writer at The Boston Globe since mid-1981.

But editorial board meetings-- and the entire editorial policy-making process--vary considerably from newspaper to newspaper.

To examine these differences, a Times reporter recently interviewed editorial page editors and writers at seven major papers and sat in on editorial board meetings at five of them. (The New York Times and Washington Post did not permit the reporter to attend their meetings.) What follows--in alphabetical order--is a capsule description of the editorial decision-making process at six of the papers. (The Los Angeles Times was discussed Monday.)

BOSTON GLOBE

Four years ago, when Boston Globe Publisher William Taylor asked Martin Nolan, the paper’s Washington bureau chief, to become editor of the editorial page, Nolan told him he had never bothered reading editorials.

“That’s exactly why you’re the man for the job,” Taylor said.

So Nolan started reading editorials.

“The greatest enemy of the editorial page,” he found, “was fuzziness, wishy-washiness.” Nolan decided on a motto--and two “unbreakable, unnegotiable rules”--for his tenure as editorial page editor. The motto: “Better to offend a million readers than to confuse one.” The rules: “Be clear and have a point.”

Nolan also told his new staff that he wanted them to write about issues of concern to Globe readers.

“When I came in, there was one editorial writer who was a nut on saving the whales,” Nolan recalled. “I said, ‘Let the whales get their own newspaper. When we solve all the human problems, then we’ll go on to the whales.’ ” The writer objected. “A few weeks later,” Nolan said, “he’s working someplace else.”

Considerable Freedom

If Nolan sounds like a man who is pretty sure of himself, that is because he is. He and Taylor still discuss editorial policy periodically, but Taylor has given him considerable freedom in the formulation of Globe editorial policy (which is probably the most politically liberal of any major metropolitan daily in the country). When Nolan convenes the Globe’s editorial board meeting every morning in a small, second-floor conference room decorated with his own collection of political campaign posters dating to the 19th Century, there is no question who is in charge.

“Rather than contradict you or dispute you directly . . . Marty likes to needle you,” Shannon said, “but it’s all very relaxed . . . very laid-back.”

It is indeed. And Nolan’s staff clearly likes him and respects him, despite the needling he subjects them to.

In a meeting earlier this year, Globe editorial writer Randolph Ryan asked if the paper was “taking a dive” and abandoning its opposition to the nomination of Edwin Meese as U.S. attorney general; Nolan cut him off with a wicked grin and a staccato series of rhetorical questions: “Have we taken a dive? Do you know what you’re talking about? Would you give me $1 for every editorial we’ve written opposing Meese? Have you even read them?”

Challenging Comments

In the same meeting, Nolan jumped firmly into several other discussions, with comments ranging from the encouraging (“Good idea. Do it.”) to the deliberately outrageous (“I’d like to trash revenue-sharing.”). Most of the time, though, he was challenging: “Are we for it? Why are we for it? Is it good or bad, right or wrong? You say it’s interesting? To whom?”

Later that day, over lunch, Nolan said he views his job as largely negative: “It’s the things you keep out of the paper. . . . That’s how you earn your money, that’s how you protect the reader.

“Can you imagine all those half-baked ideas (expressed at that morning’s meeting) going in” the paper? he asked.

Usually, Globe editorials reflect this no-nonsense approach--which means that they are generally forceful and sharply written (if not always as well-argued as those in some other papers).

Interestingly, for all his own certitude--and his determination to edit “all the air, all the ‘by the same token’ and that sort of crap” out of the Globe--Nolan said he also spends time “toning down the stridency” in his writers’ editorials.

Opinions Encouraged

But he urges them to express their opinions vigorously, in print and in the meetings, and some of them do so almost as provocatively as does Nolan himself.

As at most papers, virtually every Globe editorial writer has certain subjects that he feels strongly about--”his hobby horses,” in Nolan’s words. Some of these are important social issues; others are very personal, even trivial. Some are a blend. Mike Kenney, for example, loves to sail, and he cares passionately (and writes editorials) about “the Boston Harbor, the waterfront, the coastline.”

Apart from these subjects, Kenney said his personal style is to “disagree with everything” in the Globe’s editorial board meetings, “not because I care about the issues. . . . I don’t care about most issues. . . . I disagree so that I don’t fall asleep and everyone else doesn’t fall asleep.”

CHICAGO TRIBUNE

The Chicago Tribune editorial board is probably the most ideologically diverse of any major newspaper in the United States, with a good balance of liberals, conservatives, moderates and at least one libertarian in attendance daily.

The result: aggressive editorial board debates several times a week--and editorials that often take unexpected positions. The Tribune, long a supporter of conservative causes and candidates, has broken with the Reagan Administration on several issues, most recently in saying that Meese was not qualified to be U.S. attorney general.

Ideological diversity sometimes leads to ambivalence and neglect, too, though:

- The paper’s endorsement of President Reagan last year was almost schizophrenic in its attempts to balance strong criticism of his performance with a reluctant call for his reelection.

- On some issues, the Tribune has adopted what many editorial writers call “the Supreme Court approach”; they are so divided that they write only about the aspects of the issue on which they can agree, and they ignore the rest. Thus, on abortion, the Tribune has had almost nothing to say for several years.

Some of the Tribune’s ambivalence is the inevitable byproduct of its evolution from the strident, single-minded conservatism of its early days to the more sophisticated, even-handed but still conservative newspaper it is today. Some of the ambivalence may arise because editorial writers there sometimes write editorials they do not agree with. (As at other major papers, the editors at the Tribune say no one has to write on a subject when his view and the paper’s differ, but in practice, at least three Tribune editorial writers told The Times that they have felt obligated to do so on occasion.)

The Tribune’s editorial writers are well aware of the paper’s conservative history--and of the dominant role their editors play--when they meet every morning around a six-sided conference table that is so shiny that the men could easily use it as a mirror if they forgot to shave that morning. At some newspapers, where the meetings are fairly leisurely, editorial writers would almost have the time to shave. Not at the Tribune.

Jack Fuller--editor of the editorial page, lawyer, novelist and self-described “Midwest fiscal conservative”--keeps the meeting moving at a rapid clip, asking, “What else do we have?” “What else?” “What else?” whenever conversation begins to wander.

Fuller’s boss, Tribune Editor James Squires, also sits in on the meetings most days, and he and Fuller often take turns playing devil’s advocate to ensure that all sides of an issue are aired before an editorial postion is taken.

Lively Discussion

During a discussion the morning after Reagan’s State of the Union address earlier this year, for example, Squires advanced virtually every view from “Reagan could go down in history as a great President” to “He’s an insensitive ninny who lives in another world.”

The discussion that surrounded these statements was lively and it yielded an interesting, even-handed editorial--written by Fuller, lightly edited by Squires--for the next day’s paper.

Some newspaper editorial boards think “they’ve cornered the market on knowledge and wisdom,” Squires said, and he wants to make certain his board does not “rush to judgment” or “work within a philosophical straitjacket.”

Thus, although Fuller is forceful, intelligent and articulate, it is Squires’s view that ultimately prevails in any major disagreement; the paper supports capital punishment because Squires supports capital punishment--even though a majority of the board opposes it.

Fuller and Squires are usually in accord, but sometimes, when the board seems opposed to Squires’ position, Tribune editorial writer Joan Beck said Squires will simply say, “I have (the) . . . proxy votes in my pocket”--a reference to Charles T. Brumback, president of the Tribune Co., and Stanton R. Cook, publisher of the Tribune.

Although that happens rarely--and although Squires says Brumback and Cook seldom interfere in matters of editorial policy--Squires seems more responsive to (and less in agreement with) his bosses’ views than were most other big-city editors interviewed for this story.

In fact, when asked how much his views are in accord with theirs, he said quickly, “Not at all.”

But Squires also said that changes in his own views, and in the Tribune, over the years have enabled him to feel comfortable keeping the paper “on the right edge (of the political center) as the representative of its owners”--his own more libertarian views notwithstanding.

THE NEW YORK TIMES Mary Cantwell is an editorial writer at The New York Times--the best pure writer on the staff, say several of her colleagues. But Cantwell is also--in her own words--”extremely inarticulate.”

“Writing is really more natural for me than talking,” Cantwell said.

So, Cantwell said, sometimes when she goes to the editorial board meeting and says she has an idea for one of the offbeat editorials she specializes in, her editors “listen to me for about 30 seconds and finally someone says, ‘Oh, Mary, go write it.’ ”

She does just that, turning out short, often whimsicals essays that the paper sometimes runs at the bottom of the editorials column to leaven what is generally a somber page.

Cantwell writes well-crafted editorials on serious subjects, too--subjects ranging from child abuse to smoking to the equal rights amendment to capital punishment.

Cantwell said that she is “never ashamed to . . . admit ignorance . . . or ask questions” on such issues and that she considers their meetings “the best part of my job. . . . I sometimes feel as if I’m in a courtroom or at a debate.”

Stimulating Atmosphere

Cantwell’s colleagues agree--and most attribute the pleasure they take in this process to the intellectual level of the board and to the stimulating atmosphere of give-and-take established by Max Frankel, the editor of the editorial page.

Editorial writers in general seem more intelligent--or at least more intellectual, more reflective, better-read--than do most news reporters, and the New York Times editorial writers seem the most intellectual of all. Unlike most newspaper editorial boards--which are made up largely of people who have spent their careers working for newspapers--the Times board includes a former city housing official, a former professor of economics, a former editor of a criminal justice magazine, a longtime writer for Science magazine and a book critic and magazine writer (Cantwell); this diverse mix often yields crackling good discussions on a wide range of issues.

Cantwell and Peter Passell, the former economics professor, have clashed several times, for example, on social policy questions involving arguments of cost effectiveness against those embodying human values.

Frankel, former Washington bureau chief for the Times, says he encourages his writers to say whatever is on their minds in the meetings, even if they have not thought out their positions carefully.

Range of Reactions

“We want people to be stupid at the meetings . . . to give us man-in-the-street type reactions,” he said, because that is often the best way to show “what prejudices you’re trying to beat down, what gaps of knowledge you’re going to have to fill if you want to be taken seriously on the subject.”

Unlike most editorial boards, the Times board meets only on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays--not every weekday--and, Frankel says, most editorial policy is set not at the formal meetings but in individual conversations between him, his two assistants and the paper’s nine editorial writers.

Frankel and his assistants edit the editorials--including each other’s--far more heavily than editorials at any other major paper are edited, and that process--combined with the writers’ realization that they are writing for the most influential and prestigious newspaper in America--sometimes produces prose that others find too measured, homogenized and weighted down by the burden of the institution.

Jack Rosenthal, deputy editor of the page, sums up the Times’ editorial philosophy by saying, “Let’s say it’s 1980: The New York Times is never going to endorse John Anderson for President even though the logic of its various positions . . . might suggest that. This newspaper doesn’t go off on quixotic gestures. . . . We do not . . . represent polar positions in American society. We tend to be pretty centrist.”

Editorial Tone

Other Times editorial writers describe the tone of the paper’s editorials as being “considered, cautious, reserved” and not sufficiently crusading and as representative of “the respectable middle”; that posture may help explain why many Times editorials seem predictable--and less vigorous than they were under Frankel’s predecessor, John B. Oakes.

Too often, said John Anderson, longtime Washington Post editorial writer, New York Times editorials are “very constipated and spiritless.”

But many other journalists say Times editorials are consistently well-reasoned and well-written, and they credit Frankel and Rosenthal with making them more balanced, less stuffy and--though still clearly liberal on most issues--less an expression of knee-jerk liberalism than they frequently were under Oakes.

“I think they’re generally pretty good, even when they’re wrong,” said Stephen Chapman of the Chicago Tribune.

PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER

Claude Lewis had what he thought was a good idea for an editorial, and he brought it up early in the Philadelphia Inquirer editorial board meeting in Editor Edwin Guthman’s office. Philadelphia Mayor Wilson Goode had just announced that he was “leaning” toward decriminalizing some vice laws involving gambling and prostitution, and Lewis thought that was a bad idea.

But Guthman and another editorial writer, Susan Stranahan, both said Lewis was missing the point. Goode had said he was considering decriminalization largely because “the only people who have gone to jail as a result of vice enforcement have been police officers” convicted of accepting bribes to permit those illegal activities to flourish. Guthman and Stranahan thought the issue of decriminalization--the question of whether “victimless crimes” should be crimes--was far less important than that of police corruption; if decriminalization was Goode’s only solution to the police corruption that has long plagued Philadelphia, “it’s pretty damn feeble,” Guthman argued.

The next day, the Inquirer’s lead editorial--written by Lewis--made just that point. The editorial called Goode’s proposal a “surrealistic vision” and said it was “no answer at all . . . “ to the problem of “systemic corruption in the Police Department.”

Shift in Emphasis

That kind of shift in emphasis is typical of what happens in newspaper editorial board meetings. Editorial writers often agree on the substance of an issue--on the basic position to be taken--but they often disagree on precisely how to express their views or on what aspect of the issue is most important to write on at a given time.

What frequently happens is that the editorial writer who knows the most--and cares the most--about a particular subject wants to write a far more strongly worded editorial than his colleagues or the editorial page editor thinks is warranted. In such situations, the editor moderates the rhetoric--in the meeting and in the editorial.

Rick Nichols, an editorial writer at the Inquirer, says this often happens at his paper, even though Guthman, Nichols and most of the editorial board is decidedly liberal.

Inquirer editorials are “wishy-washy, wimpy,” Nichols said. “Where other . . . (papers) might say, ‘Hey, the emperor has no clothes,’ we might say, ‘Well, The emperor says the reason he has no clothes is because all his stuff is in the dry cleaner today.’ ”

But Guthman--who said he personally agrees with Nichols on most issues--argues, “What this newspaper ought to say . . . is a little bit different than what . . . I might want to say.

‘I’d like to take clear-cut, hard stands, too, but not all issues . . . lend themselves to that,” he said. “They’re not that simple.”

Still, the Inquirer has campaigned vigorously on a number of issues--ranging from court reform to getting more taxis in the city--and Guthman probably has more freedom in running his page than does almost any other editorial page editor. The Inquirer has no publisher and (Guthman says) no interference from Knight Ridder corporate headquarters, and although Executive Editor Gene Roberts is Guthman’s direct superior, Roberts does not attend the daily editorial board meetings and generally discusses only major campaign endorsements and long-range policy--not specific editorials--with Guthman.

As a result of this--and of the relatively few overseas trips that Inquirer editorial writers are permitted to take--many Inquirer editorial writers worry that their page is “not a high priority” with Roberts.

Roberts denies this. “I have great confidence in Ed,” he said. “I wouldn’t feel comfortable being a close part of the editorial page when I’m in charge of the news on a daily basis.”

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Most mornings, at about 9:30--or 10:20 or 10:40 or whenever is convenient--George Melloan, deputy editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page, meets with whichever of the paper’s seven editorial writers are interested and not otherwise occupied.

Sometime during the discussion--or before or after, if at all--Melloan will receive a telephone call from Suzanne Garment in Washington (where she writes editorials and a weekly column for the Journal), and a call or a computer message from Seth Lipsky in Brussels (where he edits the editorial page of the Journal’s European edition) and a call or a computer message from Paul Gigot in Hong Kong (where he edits the editorial page of the Journal’s Asian edition). These people will tell Melloan what topics they have that might interest him for the Journal’s editorial page in the United States.

Meanwhile, Melloan, the writers and--when he is in town--their Pulitzer Prize-winning boss, Editor (of the editorial page) Robert L. Bartley, will be gathered in an office (generally Melloan’s), where they will pass an hour or so exchanging wisdom and wisecracks in the most offhand fashion. Bartley characteristically puts his feet up on the desk and pokes gentle fun at those public officials who differ from the Journal’s special brand of what Bartley calls “vaguely neo-conservative” thought. Editorial writer Greg Fossedal often stands in the doorway, poised--Bartley said--for a quick getaway “if the discussion gets overbearing.”

Light Conversation

Some days, even these informal sessions are dispensed with, and Melloan or Bartley will just stroll into the offices of one or more editorial writers individually to strike up a light, one-on-one conversation on any number of economic, political or philosophical issues.

Out of this seeming disorder emerges what many editors and editorial writers at other prestigious papers say are often the best-written, best-argued editorials in American journalism today.

Even journalists who disagree wholeheartedly with the Journal’s basic editorial philosophy praise the quality of its editorials.

“The . . . Journal clearly has the most entertaining editorial page of any major paper in the country,” said Donald Graham, publisher of the Washington Post. “They argue . . . informatively and interestingly. They often argue for (Reagan) Administration views more persuasively than the Administration itself does.”

Some critics say the Journal identifies too closely with the Administration. Others say it too seldom editorializes on major social issues--and too often offers editorial solutions that are simplistic and self-righteous.

“The Journal editorial page generally has the view that nobody with an IQ over 50 could conceivably disagree with them,” Graham said.

Provocative Reading

But most credit Bartley with providing consistently provocative editorials.

Indeed, the prevailing assumption outside the Journal seems to be that Journal editorials sound so much like Bartley that he must write virtually all of them. Actually, he is on the road as much as 30% of the time and probably writes fewer than one editorial a week himself. But he writes many of the major editorials on sensitive subjects, he does not hesitate to edit or even to rewrite others’ editorials and he concedes that his basic viewpoint probably comes through in virtually all the paper’s editorials, no matter who writes them.

It is Bartley’s strong viewpoint, in fact--what Melloan called the “core philosophy” of the editorials--that enables the Journal editorial page to function as well as it does despite its seemingly casual decision-making process.

Bartley is “like a good football coach,” Fossedal said. “His strategy pervades every play on the field.”

Even Bartley is subject to persuasion by others, though. Gigot persuaded him to take a more critical look at Philippine President Ferdinand E. Marcos, for example, and although the Journal is widely credited with helping to promulgate the Administration’s “supply-side” theory of economics, Bartley was originally skeptical of that theory. He said it took Jude Wanniski, a Journal editorial writer in the early 1970s, two years to persuade him (at the rate of “an inch a day”) to enlist the Journal editorial columns in the forefront of the battle to implement supply-side economics as national policy. Once converted, of course, Bartley adopted “supply-side” with zeal, and--like the rest of his philosophy--it is now a basic tenet of Journal editorial doctrine.

THE WASHINGTON POST

Meg Greenfield, editorial page editor of The Washington Post, enjoys telling people that Mussolini once spent several years as an editorial writer. That story--which is true--is Greenfield’s way of poking fun at the self-importance and self-righteousness that editorial writers often exhibit.

Greenfield’s iconoclasm is the most noticeable feature of the Post’s editorials these days.

Under Greenfield’s predecessor, Philip L. Geyelin, the Post was traditionally liberal on most issues. Under Greenfield, Post editorials--while still largely liberal--have shifted somewhat to the right on some issues and have generally become more questioning of basic liberal assumptions.

“That is not an accident,” Greenfield said. Most intelligent liberals are re-examining their ideas now. But Greenfield was Geyelin’s deputy for 10 years, and although she concedes that others (mostly liberals) say the editorials have become considerably more conservative since she took over, she insists that most of the changes have been idiosyncratic, not ideological--more matters of emphasis than of substance.

When Geyelin was hired in 1966--first as deputy editor of the editorial page and then as its editor--he was hired in part, he says, because Katharine Graham (then publisher of the Post) wanted to shift the paper away from its support of America’s role in Vietnam.

‘Turned Down the Volume’

The passions that fueled the subsequent editorial debates at the Post--and elsewhere--carried over to other issues in the turbulent 1960s. In time, Geyelin “deliberately turned down the volume,” said John Anderson, who has been writing editorials at the Post for most of the last 24 years.

“We went to much longer pieces, much more explanatory, less hortatory,” Anderson said. “It was a useful, valuable service.”

Post editorials ultimately became “a little languid” under Geyelin, Anderson said, and now--with the political atmosphere having changed again--”they’re shorter, sharper” (and often sarcastic) under Greenfield.

Just as Greenfield delights in challenging others’ assumptions, so she encourages others to challenge her assumptions. On at least two major issues--immigration reform and the lawsuits arising out of the use of the Agent Orange herbicide in Vietnam--her staff changed her mind (and the position the paper ultimately took) in the course of many editorial board meetings over several months time.

Routine Meetings

Although Greenfield said, “There’s a certain amount of laughing while the blood is flowing” in some Post meetings, the paper’s editorial writers say the meetings tend to be devoid of what Anderson called “huge doctrinal arguments.” This is largely because so many members of the board have worked together for so long; four of them have been on the board for more than 15 years. Thus, their meetings are like a well-choreographed routine; everyone usually knows what position everyone else is going to take.

There is a danger in this kind of insularity, of course--especially in a city as insular as Washington; sometimes, writers forget they are writing for regular readers and write only for each other and for the opinion-makers in government.

That is the biggest criticism one hears of Post editorials. Indeed, it is one of the biggest criticisms one hears of editorials in general--that because of the insularity of the editorial board, the predictability of most editorial positions, the stylistic shorthand required by the constraints of space and the frequency with which editorials address the same topics--editorials often become the newspaper equivalent of inside baseball: intelligible and interesting only to the political and journalistic cognoscenti.

Susanna Shuster of The Times editorial library assisted with the research for this article.