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Pat Kinney's avatar

Nice analysis, Ed. Well done.

I remember covering the 2006 congressional race between Waterloo attorney Bruce Braley and Davenport restaurateur Mike Whalen of Iowa Machine Shed fame (yes, there was a time when Waterloo and Davenport were in the same congressional district, go figure). At one forum, Mike confronted me and said, with a bit of tongue in cheek, 'What kind of newspaper doesn't make endorsements?" I replied in equal measure and with good humor, "WE don't!" As a good Quad Citian, Mike was used to the Times sticking its neck out there. In contrast the Waterloo Courier NEVER made endorsements, except on local ballot issues. As one publisher told me, bluntly, "You just p*** off half your readership!" And I did, over the years, think there was that "kiss of death" syndrome with endorsements, particularly with the Register. It would even make primary election endorsements, when everyone knew there was one party the paper's editorial board leaned toward more often than not; I mean, with all due respect, who did they think they were kidding?

I'm not sure if there's a right or wrong answer in every situation.

One of my ISU profs, Ed Blinn, once told me " A newspaper without an editorial page is a newspaper without a soul." And I suppose part of having a "soul" is having the chuzpah to stick one's neck out once in a while. As the great I.F. Stone once told me when I interviewed him for a class assignment at Iowa State, "Jefferson's idea of freedom of the press wasn't to have a bunch of political eunuchs running around."

Still, I prefer to lay out the facts and let the reader connect the dots; if the facts definitely point in a certain direction, it's not out of bounds to sum it up and say so. We're no smarter than our readers but we are their eyes and ears when it comes to laying out information. They're smart enough to draw their own conclusions.

I'm reminded of the fable we read in grade school about the sun and the wind betting each other on which could remove a man's coat from him first. The wind blew and blew and the man bundled his coat up tighter to himself. The sun just got brighter and turned on the heat, and eventually the man became too hot and decided to take the coat off himself.

Sunlight is a great cure for a lot of things.

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WENDY KRAFT's avatar

Well stated and I agree 100%

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