Schoolhouse Rock: How a Bill Becomes A Law… err… Staff Editorial

You know, if I could, I’d totally make this one into a cartoon. It has so much potential – I could make a little cartoon Gillian (our opinion editor) and have her dance and sing about how we come up with a staff editorial. And then she could explain conjunctions, as well.

Alas, my superpowers don’t extend that far. X-ray vision and flying only get you so far.

So, today, due to an overwhelming number of requests via email, we’re going to talk about how staff editorials get created.

Now, if you know anything about how a newspaper runs internally, you probably know two things:

• A staff editorial is, in theory, the stated opinion of the newspaper’s editorial board.
• At most small and mid-size dailies, it’s actually the opinion of the editorial writer, as long as it doesn’t piss off the editor-in-chief.

At The Daily Colonial, we try to strike a balance between the two.

We just recently revamped the whole system so it’s a little more democratic, and hopefully a little more fact-oriented as well. Here’s how it goes:

• We divide the executive committee into four categories: news (campus, metro, Mount Vernon affairs), features (arts, style, enterprise, sports), opinion and administrative.
• The opinion editor comes up with a topic or gets a suggestion from a staff member, and gathers the basic information.
• The opinion editor gets in contact with four people, one from each category, based on what is appropriate to the topic. So, for example, if it’s an editorial about the SA, probably the campus news editor will represent “newsâ€?; if it’s about the ANC, probably the metro editor.
• The four deliberate, trade ideas, and eventually come to a majority opinion.
• The opinion editor writes the majority opinion, and we publish it.

So that’s how it works – mostly. This is a college newspaper that publishes six days a week with a tiny, tiny revenue stream – extremely uncommon, even at the best universities. Not everything works perfectly every time. Sometimes, when we’re down to the wire, it might just be the opinion editor. But we try to make it work the normal way whenever we can.

So, who should you complain to if you disagree with an editorial?

Well, if you’re not lazy, get up off your ass and write a letter to the editor. If you are lazy (so, basically, everyone in college), you can always complain here. Harassing the individual editors isn’t going to do much, though. First off, you don’t know exactly who was on the board from each category, and even if you did, there’s the whole voting thing – and yes, people (read: me) get out voted. A lot.

So, that’s the answer to that. Keep the questions coming. Or, you know, I’ll use my superpowers on you… make your head shrink or something like that.