Why unsigned newspaper editorials no longer work
Media coverage of the brutal public murder of Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist and commentator, exposed a glaring weakness in opinion journalism: the unsigned newspaper editorial.
A centuries-old tradition at many national, regional and local news outlets, the institutional view rendered by a nameless editorial board too often sinks without a trace in the hyper-partisan and hyper-fragmented digital information flow. Or, worse, attempts to apply a high polish that instead seems counterfactual and condescending.
Kirk’s murder showed that the consensus-driven, carefully parsed language of editorial boards offers little more than a view from nowhere, to bend a term used by media critic Jay Rosen and originated by philosopher Thomas Nagel. However high-minded, anonymous editorials also often go unread, sometimes deservedly so.
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