the MSM is morbid, dishonest, and biased toward gloom and cowardice coddling.

I’m shocked that you haven’t taken this opportunity to call me a coward for the third time in a single day. Of course you still manage to be arrogant and condescending. You do that well, at least.

I’m not trying to be a “news organization.” This blog consists of my opinion. That’s the entire purpose of its existence. I’m not trying to muscle in on your territory, so quit trying to get in a pissing match.

But I suppose the best single post that spells out the reasons for my opinion is this one.

Eastern Illinois University is a fine school, and I would recommend its journalism department over any other in the state because it offers more hands-on training in a daily newspaper/television/radio environment than any other in the state.

You can be assured that I left EIU knowing full well how editorial boards work. They work badly, and at the Daily Eastern News it worked closer to the way they are supposed to work than any other newspaper for which I have worked. The idea that a group of people could or would be selected to decide the “view of the institution” is at best a noble theory, but not one that often works in real life. In the real world, we have editorial boards chosen not because they reflect the view of entire paper, but those who reflect the views of the owner (should be paper be owned by real humans instead of a corporation) or the views of the people who run the paper.

I’ve never been on a member of an editorial board in which minority views among board members were tolerated.

And there’s this whole “opinion of the institution thing.” What a joke. The entire the Pekin Daily Times is NOT represented by the three-person editorial board. If the circulation department represented? The ad department? The cleaning crew? I doubt that if the majority of the news staff were polled, on most days, most would take issue with that day’s editorial.

And do you really want us to believe that every single word that appears in an unsigned editorial is the group opinion of your editorial board? Did your three-member editorial board really decide who endorse for president? For governor? Really? What were the votes?

And consider for a moment how this concept plays with the general public, most of whom do not benefit from a j-school education. All they see is that this big institution is telling them what they should think.

What is the benefit of an unsigned editorial? None that I can see, other than it perpetuates the idea that the editorial opinion is the voice of the institution and thus is supposed to carry more strength. In fact the opposite is true. In fact, the unsigned editorial is becoming increasingly in disrepute, as news consumers are demanding more transparency, not less, from the news media.

How ironic that the mainstream media argues for continuing a policy that keeps readers less informed about news and opinion is presented. The Pekin Daily Times would not tolerate a government or any powerful institution that tried to keep the public less informed, yet it argues in favor of its policy of doing the exact same thing.

Unsigned editorials hide responsibility for the written words that appear in the newspaper. Individuals have biases. All of them. They can be addressed, in the open, or their can be hidden in an attempt to pretend they do not exist.

Regarding the Peoria Pundit’s beef with the unsigned editorial – in Bill’s post about the subject, he quotes and links to a BuzzMachine post that says unsigned editorials “attempt to speak as the voices of institutions, issuing opinions as if from the mountaintop. But today, we do not trust institutions. We are impatient with lectures. We demand to speak eye-to-eye as humans. We require conversation.”

Bill obviously has problems with the JS editorial board in general and frequently disagrees with them. I believe he referred to Mike Bailey as a Luddite, and often refers to the writers of their unsigned editorials as “nameless gnomes.” You’d have to ask him exactly what his beef might be.

I understand and appreciate your points, Michelle. I guess I just wonder why you can’t put up a “poster board” with a topic and each write your own opinion instead of trying to homogenize your views into a cohesive whole. I will say that in this particular case it works well. The end product is balanced and fair and offers some interesting ideas. I suppose one could argue that finding a consensus is what democracy is all about – forging a cohesive, workable whole from disparate opinions.

Thanks for your comments, Michelle.

I guess we could place little notes in the text of editorials, like: (this next bit is Rick’s opinion) and then (but this opposing viewpoint is Michelle’s) and then (this ending is purely Gregg’s idea, and Michelle and Rick don’t agree with it at all, but in the spirit of compromise we’re going with it). A bit silly, don’t you think?

I am not familiar with Bill Dennis’ opinion on this, but he certainly should know better than to disparage the unsigned editorial. He was a journalism major at EIU and unless he wasn’t paying attention at all he ought to understand how editorial boards work. I excuse the general public for not understanding this, but if what you say is true, come on, Bill!