Blumner a vegetable

Though I'd dearly love to rip apart every Robyn Blumner editorial other than the (rarer and rarer) reasonable expression of libertarian values, time simply does not permit. I now plan to say something about the Blumster's weekly editorial even if I don't have time to pick on fallacies or errors of fact.

So here's the weekly whack at the Times' primary pinata. This week, an editorial column titled "Please read your vegetables while they're still hear." If you can't guess right away, this is an editorial extolling the healthful benefits of reading editorials. Can we assume that Blumner has her own work at least party in mind?

The sports and lifestyles sections are the dessert. And the editorials are the vegetables. They may not be the most delectable part of the paper, but they are highly nutritious brain food, necessary to a citizen's appreciation of government actions and current events.
(St. Petersburg Times)

That's a little window into the thinking on the Times' editorial board. They think they're pretty smart (though no doubt modesty forbids most of the time), and their opinions are quite trustworthy as a result.

The problem, of course, is that print circulation for newspapers is declining. The editorial board can (and does) look back on its role in helping the public make its decisions about whom to vote into office, and the future could look brighter. These are people accustomed to wielding power (anybody's guess as to how much they actually possess), and they're not crazy about seeing it slip away.

Smart, studied opinion grounded in objective fact and logical argument representing the institutional voice of the newspaper - whether you agree with the paper's bent or not - is of great value to society.

That's a sentence I would agree with wholeheartedly, if my agreement weren't choked off by the hundreds of lamebrained editorials I've read in the Times over the years. The fact is that the newspapers can't be trusted to get things right, and the newspapers have largely reversed the intended appeal of an "objective" point of view on the news. The right-wing editor at the St. Petersburg Times is probably a moderate with a few Libertarian leanings.

The erosion of journalistic objectivity helped accelerate the decline of the daily newspaper.

I rue this day (which is pretty much here). I think newspapers, and editorial pages in particular, risk their powerful credibility by inviting anyone and everyone into an opining fight club.

In my view, the reader commentary posted on a newspaper's Web site should meet the same standards and criteria as that applied to the letters to the editor section of the print edition. That means no one should be anonymous - which I believe would reduce the vitriol and irresponsible attacks. And, if the reader states an untruth the comment should be barred.

Oh, and if only Blumner truly had that standard applied to her editorials!

There's one good and surprising thing about this week's editorial, however.

She neglected to mention President Bush.



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