Survey probes status of op-ed journalism and practices of op-ed editors

Newspaper Research Journal, Spring 1998 by Ciofalo, Andrew

This survey shows that almost all op-ed pages accept free-lance contributions, but fewer than 25 percent pay fees. Respondents publish only 13.9 percent of the free-lance submissions, an average of 2.72 per paper per week.

It is easily assumed that an op-ed page, like an editorial page, is a regular feature of daily newspapers. However, not even journalism's most avid commercial list keepers can provide a list of op-ed editors or even newspapers with op-ed pages.l The professional invisibility of the op-ed page and its editors is not readily explainable, unless there just aren't that many daily newspapers publishing such pages.

Of course the op-ed page should be a fairly important part of any newspaper. It encourages public discourse in an open forum of ideas that nurtures the community involvement so necessary to the effective functioning of government and democracy at all levels.2 Unlike a newspaper's signature editorial page where the discourse agenda is set by the editorial gatekeepers, the op-ed page is the one place in the paper where public discourse, through the mediation of a service editor, can emerge unfettered.3

The evolution of the op-ed editors as a group distinct from their editorial page counterparts has occurred only in the last eight years with the establishment of the Association of Opinion Page Editors (AOPE). It wasn't until 1989 that the critical mass of op-ed editors had grown to an extent that they could consider a meeting as an entity separate from the National Conference of Editorial Writers (NCEW), whose membership is drawn from the editorial page editors and writers.

According to one of the AOPE's charter members and former president, Tom Peeling of the Palm Beach Post:

In Philadelphia [1989], I watched a fledgling group try to define itself. In Minneapolis [2990], I saw it all come together as we met and passed bylaws that explained who we are and what our purpose is. When we met in West Palm Beach [1991], I saw the dedication of a small number of editors who had managed to talk their bosses into allowing them to make the trip despite tight economic times in the newspaper business; some even paid their own way. In San Francisco[1992] we attracted our largest group [to date].4

From 1990 through 1991, submissions of the best op-ed pages for inclusion in AOPE's annual publication, hovered between 16 and 19. In 1992 that number increased to 29.5

Forty op-ed editors attended the 1993 annual meeting of AOPE in Chicago - the largest turnout in the group's five-year history. There the op-ed editors rejected the proposal of an NCEW representative for a joint annual meeting for fear that the op-ed editors would lose their autonomy to the much larger NCEW. This represented a milestone in the thinking of op-ed editors as they clearly defined their role and mission as totally distinct and separate from the editors of the signature editorial page or section.6 It remains to be seen whether this expansion indicates that op-ed pages are in a new growth phase or that professional self awareness among op-ed editors is on the rise.

The rapid emergence of the AOPE since 1989 and the vigorous courting by the much larger and established NCEW intent on merger, may indicate that op-ed journalism now challenges the importance and prestige of the editorial page in the minds of the readers. This could also be supported by the anecdotal evidence of readership surveys attesting to the popularity of op-ed pages.7

But no data have been developed - either through the AOPE, list brokers or journalism scholars - to assess the extent to which op-ed pages have proliferated among American daily newspapers, the characteristics of papers with oped pages, and the general content of those pages.8

While op-ed pages may have a long hidden history, they seemed to burst upon the editorial scene in 1970. The publication in 1990 by the New York Times of a 20-year anniversary retrospective of that paper's most prestigious or characteristic op-ed pieces underscored the prevalent but far-from-unanimous notion in editorial circles that the Times had formally invented what most observers consider a fairly widespread practice of publishing a right-hand opinion page opposite the official left-hand editorial page of a newspaper.9 It would take extensive archival research to verify such a claim, and much of that research in now defunct newspapers whose back issues, if preserved, may be consigned to storage rooms at libraries or universities when such institutions could be found to accept these often massive collections.

The Wall Street Journal, in a letter to the author, claims an op-ed tradition that goes back more than 100 years."A note from Baltimore op-ed writer Carl Pohlner says that he chanced upon such a page published in the now defunct Baltimore News-Post as long ago as 1946, and it included free-lance whimsical essays of the type that Pohlner writes.ll Kenneth Rystrom suggests the first op-ed page "may have been produced by the New York World in the late 1920s and early 1930s ... heavily oriented toward the arts and culture."'2 Rystrom notes that a book on newspaper editing published in 1942 "credited the Louisville Courier-Journal's editorial page and 'page opposite editorial' or 'oped' page with setting one of the outstanding examples in design for editorial pages."13