A thousand words: Editorials in pictures
Rothschild, BeccaWhen Ron Dzwonkowski took over as the Free Press editorial page editor seven years ago, he made it clear to all who would listen that an editorial doesn't always have to be the traditional "here's what we think and here's what we know to support our position" structure. In fact, it doesn't have to be many words at all. And if pictures can tell a story, they can also show readers the whys and wherefores of an editorial.
Deputy nation/world editor Peter Gavrilovich was listening. So when he saw a picture of lines of people snaking through South Africa waiting for their first chance to vote, he showed it to Ron and asked why we don't do that here. Thus one of our first photo-editorials was born.
Like many good ideas, this one continued to grow. South Africa's election day wasn't America's, and we figured if it was worth doing once, it was worth doing again. On a handful of election days over the past several years, we've pulled together photos from far-flung places where people don't whine about waiting in a voting line often or twenty but turn out for hours or days for the privilege. (And when I say we, I mean chief copy editor Gerry Skora who finds and edits the photos and lays out the page, almost before we ask at this point.)
This presidential election, we wanted to raise the voting profile even more. So we devoted a month to a daily "Why Vote" feature-editorials, letters to the editor, op-eds, or nuggets, maybe a great quote, maybe a number, like the number of votes that separated Al Gore and George Bush in 2000, or the number of people who voted for the American Idol vs. the president. It all culminated this year on the page you see here.
Effective? One of our first "Why Vote" editorial pages was featured on Chuck Stokes "Spotlight on the News" on Detroit's WXYZ.
And it got people talking. Whether it got them to the polls, we'll never know. But we like to think it inspired a few people to cast their ballots-and not complain so much if they had to wait fifteen minutes to do so.
Becca Rothschild is associate editor of the editorial pages of the Detroit Free Press. E-mail rothschild@freepress.com
Copyright MASTHEAD National Conference of Editorial Writers Autumn 2005
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