Paul Greenberg, who retired Friday as editorial page editor of the Democrat-Gazette after 23 years, will be succeeded by David Barham next week, but will stay on as columnist and editorial writer. Today we reprint the first column he wrote for the Democrat-Gazette, which appeared May 3, 1992:
Wish me luck. This is my first column for the Democrat-Gazette. I'm here because the publisher, Walter Hussman Jr., came to Pine Bluff for lunch one day and told me he wanted to build a great American newspaper. This at a time when great American newspapers are declining and dying, not being created.
You can't have a great newspaper without a great editorial page. Walter Hussman said he wanted an editorial section that was "highly literate, stimulating and thought-provoking. . . ."
He spoke of hewing closely to the old-fashioned, complete separation of news from opinion, and noted that the editorial page editor would report solely to the publisher. He wanted a writing editor, he said, not just an administrator.
I could feel my pulse racing. For a newspaperman, talk like this is better than 15 minutes on a Stairmaster. And now I'm writing this column at five in the morning because I couldn't sleep any longer before getting to work.
Everybody on a newspaper staff thinks his job is the most important. Or should. It probably is, the way every link in a chain is the most important.
A newspaper is a team effort put together by some of the most egocentric folks in town. No wonder it's a daily miracle.
To the aficionado of editorials, the kind of addict who'll read them no matter what they say, or even if they don't say much of anything, and who even commits them on occasion, there's no doubt that the editorials are the heart and soul of a newspaper, sometimes the tears and gall.
A newspaper without editorials is like a day without sunshine--or without a dull fog or a violent thunderstorm, depending on the quality and judgment of the editorials.
Editorials let a newspaper establish a character of its own apart from the news--or fail to establish one. Over time, a paper should develop an editorial personality as distinctive as that of a ship or a country; it's a good sign when people refer to their newspaper by the feminine pronoun. She's part of their lives then.
Editorials owe their readers candor. And ambition. If they fail, they should be magnificent failures. They should not fail because their too-careful writers took pains to avoid anything as risky as a different idea. That way lies a deadening mediocrity.
The best editorial pages combine a lot of talent and few inhibitions. Too many editorial writers have been trained to play it safe, stick with the tried and failed, and never fool with anything so unpredictable as a highly literate, stimulating, and thought-provoking editorial page. That's how the minimal test of an editorial--that it not embarrass the newspaper--tends to become the whole aim of the endeavor.
Moral: Respectability has ruined more newspapermen than alcohol ever did. I think it was Walter Lippmann who first said that, and he certainly should have known.
A suffocating fog of calculation hangs over many of the editorials I see from day to day--a fear that the usual powers and principalities of the world will prove the writer wrong, or, even more dangerous, prematurely right.
So we write to cover every contingency and include every option. That means stretching words and phrases beyond the elasticity of even the English language. Then we act surprised when whatever craft and credibility we may have brought to the task goes SNAP!--unable to bear all that dead weight.
The editorial writer owes the reader a regard for the word, even a certain fear and trembling before it. When we fail, it should not be because we have settled for the routine, and forgotten what words can conjure.
Flaubert could have been singing the editorial writer's blues when he wrote: "Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap out tunes for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars."
Did you notice that, even while decrying the supposed limits of language, M. Flaubert exceeded them? That should be the editorial writer's goal, too.
We opinionators are scarcely Flauberts, but we can try to be all that we are, and exceed even our own narrow limits by writing as if we were expressing the discernment and wit, spirit and conscience, of a great newspaper.
A good editorial page, like good conversation, has to be a mutual endeavor. It is a participation sport, a joint exercise in serious fun, a modern version of the ancient Greek forum.
I am not unmindful of the trust this job implies--a trust on the part not only of the Democrat-Gazette but of the community, and of the unique state this newspaper reflects, and reflects upon.
I'm here to hold Walter Hussman to the promise he's made himself. I'm here in hopes he'll hold me to any promise I've shown. It's all enough to give me a familiar sensation: stage fright.
To bring off this show, the full participation of Gentle Reader will be indispensable, which doubtless means some less-than-gentle criticism down the road. Wish me luck.
Paul Greenberg is the editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. E-mail him at: pgreenberg@arkansasonline.com.
Editorial on 07/25/2015