How well did we perform?

In the days before this issue of The Masthead went to press, I relived the labyrinthine presidential election.

Among the most intriguing tasks was reading many of the hundreds of editorials from 23 newspapers that are archived on a Web site at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. For the good and the bad, the Miami U site offers a barometer of how well we editorialists covered this election.

Students at Miami thought they were signing up for a course in editorial writing taught by associate professor Hugh Morgan. But they ended up living a course in political history.

From September through mid-December, students downloaded editorials on the presidential campaign and post-election, and critiqued them. Their observations - and Morgan's - are summarized in this issue. But it is well worth a visit to the Web site to read the editorials and the students' critiques in depth (www.muohio.edu/editorials).

Unfortunately, some major publications, such as The New York Times, are not among the student-critiqued papers. But there are enough large and medium-sized papers to use the site as a measure of editorial effectiveness during the historic post-election days.

I found a few gems among the professional editorials on the site. There was also some delightful writing and original thinking.

As could be expected, at least three papers wrote editorials for November 8 declaring George W. Bush was president. One was able to get in a rewrite before the final editions went out, but it is unclear how the others later handled their miscalculations.

And there were misspellings of names or misunderstandings of Florida laws and procedures.

But mostly, the editorials were accurate and fair.

Troublingly, though, far too many were long and overwritten. Time and again, editorial writers failed to do more than offer synopses of the previous day's news events. It seemed, several students commented, as if the editorials were merely filling space.

Sometimes, the writers appeared to be under pressure to say "something" when nothing was happening. At worst, some were repeating lines right out of partisan camps.

At one point, a student who found a strong editorial proclaimed: "I am just glad to see someone take a clear stand."

It would be well worth our effort to go back and review our post-election work with a more critical eye.

Granted this was an unprecedented election in American history, and as such deserved our close attention and analyses. But were there times when we could have looked for solutions instead of reacting to yesterday's news?

And were we so obsessed that we missed out on local and state issues? After all, the world did not stop while Florida peered at chads.

Did we truly serve our readers?

I'd like to mention that the cover art is from the Miami U Web site, designed by Charlie Zimkus, a December grad who is now a staff artist at The Columbus Dispatch.

Copyright MASTHEAD National Conference of Editorial Writers Spring 2001
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved