Well, here’s a change at Wednesday Journal that we’ve talked about for a couple of years and is now going to happen as we’ve moved into the NEWSWELL orbit.
After 45 years, we’re ending the practice of running unsigned editorials on this page. Those editorials have really been one of our defining missions from the start. Our goal back in 1980 was to create a lively and civil soapbox for Oak Park and River Forest to debate and congratulate, argue and persuade. The conversation, as we saw it, started with a clearly worded local editorial. Always about a local matter, always with a clear point of view. And then we opened the pages to everyone in town.
We succeeded. To this day the Journal runs more reader letters, One Views and local columnists than any other community paper I’ve ever seen. It is a big point of pride for all of us and a key point of engagement both in print and digitally.
Over those decades a fair number of people have taken a turn writing the editorials in the Journal and in our Forest Park Review and Riverside-Brookfield Landmark. When we were a bigger newsroom there was a more legitimate editorial board that conferred on Monday mornings about topics and positions we’d take up.
There was a “we.”
In recent years though as our staff became smaller, writing the editorials has come back to me. And while over the decades we’ve never kept it a secret who was writing the edits at that moment in time, we did stand behind the tradition of the institutional “we.”
But no more.
It is a worthy conceit that no longer adds value.
And so instead of “we” our edit page is reverting back to “me.” Going forward my resurrected column will appear in this space. It will stick to local issues. You won’t walk away wondering what I was trying to say, as the goal is to be plain spoken. It’ll be somewhat more personal, as a column ought to be.
For instance, the “institutional we” never found a way to mention it had become a grandfather for the first time and that life was ever changed and made better. Dear Nayeli’s name is certain to turn up from time to time.
Mainly though I’ll write about the issues our strong reporters are taking up, topics I hear about in the neighborhood, issues I think need driving into the conversation. And while these columns won’t represent the views of the newspaper as an institution, they will offer the context of a fellow who has been immersed in Oak Park, River Forest and Forest Park for decades, who loves these villages and still sees the warts and blind spots.
And when you disagree, then write us a letter.
The conversation continues.
