All Blog Posts from Public Eye

I’ve always known I have an old soul. Watching old Chaplin flicks, hanging on to those vinyl records, calling cars ‘tin lizzies.’ (Okay, maybe not that last one.) But this week’s PR Week piece suggesting that editorials were going the way of the dinosaur had me grumbling like Grampa Simpson.

The piece opens like this:

Simply put, talk is cheap these days. The advent of cable news lowered the bar of entry into the public discussion; the Internet has almost totally obliterated it.

It then adds some grudging “well, maybe editorials still matter” testimonials before ending with this dirge-like kicker:

As the masses realize they can participate in the public discourse without a third party, newspaper editorials may slowly become - like copyboys and typewriters - a quaint tradition.

No doubt. Talk is cheap nowadays. And the public can participate in the public discourse. But far from being a techno-utopia, today’s spicy media jambalaya of blogs, cable news debates and talk radio shows doesn’t always lend itself to reasoned, step-by-step political and cultural discussion. And that’s part of their appeal.

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Hooray for transparency! That’s what the Los Angeles Times is screaming today in celebration of the relocation of its opinion page to the first section of the paper. So today’s opinion page is one big explainer-o-rama. Wondered about those people who write the paper’s editorials? You can check out the bios of the editorial board’s nine writers and three editors here. And how do they choose what to write about? “We go wherever our interests lead us - skid row, Sacramento, Shanghai - but we're not entirely free to write whatever we want. The editorial board imposes a few institutional constraints, by design,” writes the Times. Those constraints include the paper’s past positions on any given topic, and the writing is “a team effort…A member of the board (editors included) can't write an editorial endorsing a position in the absence of consensus among the group.” Of course, “Editor Andres Martinez and Deputy Editor Michael Newman have a bigger say, especially in wielding a veto, and both report directly to the publisher, who has an even bigger say.”

Want some more explaining? Editors of the Op-ed page and Letters to the Editor offer some insight into the machinations behind their respective charges. And in case you wondered what Joel Stein is thinking (aren’t we all?) check out the philosophy behind his column—and those of the other Op-ed writers for the Times here.

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Thanks to BuzzMachine's Jeff Jarvis, the reaction to Public Eye within the blogosphere has begun to trickle in. In his pre-launch profile of our endeavor, Jarvis expressed some concerns and questions of his own and asked fellow bloggers to weigh in with their advice or opinions. And weigh in they did.


The most popular subject by far concerned “objectivity” and “opinion.” When meeting with Jarvis, and in a variety of other interviews, I have sought to differentiate PE from the more traditional role of an ombudsman. The reason: We envision a more robust, dynamic and conversational dialogue — less “big J” journalism theory and more practical realism. In trying to emphasize that difference, I told Jarvis that this blog won’t be “opinionated.” Here is part of his response:

“Try this on for size: I think there’s no such thing as an objective blogger. Or you’re probably not blogging. You’re probably not talking with people, eye to eye. We’re about to kill the myth that journalists can be thoroughly objective; let’s not start trying to accrete that artificial ethic to blogs.”

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