Write six, and then we'll see ... (07/12/06)

Write six, and then we’ll see.

That’s the advice I’ve been offering for years to folks who say they’re interested in writing a column for the newspaper.

It’s advice that grew out of my own stuttering steps to get a column launched.

My first efforts weren’t bad, in and of themselves, but they stumbled when it came to appearing regularly in the paper.

Just for the record — future Jay County historians and recorders of minutiae take note — my first column in a Jay County newspaper was something called “For What It’s Worth.”

The title was taken from an old Buffalo Springfield song, but it must have prompted many readers to say to themselves, “Not much.”

It appeared — sporadically — on the editorial page of The CR in the late 1970s.

But it never found the right “voice.”

Neither did another column launched a few years later, which overlapped. That one was called “Notebook,” and it was supposed to be more informal. The intent was to evoke the old “Jay Bird Chatter” column of The Graphic’s golden era of the 1950s.

Needless to say, it didn’t work.

So, for more than a decade, I gave up on the idea of writing a column.

Instead, I wrote the daily newspaper’s editorials. Lots of them. During one period of more than ten years, I was cranking out six a week, 52 weeks a year.

Trouble is, that “official voice of the newspaper” sounded as if it had been cranked out after awhile.

(Readers routinely have trouble with the nomenclature of the editorial, so here’s a primer. An editorial is the newspaper’s formal position on an issue; according to our traditions at The CR it bears the initials of the author. A column is a more personal piece of writing. A letter to the editor is just that, a reader’s expression of opinion.

Routinely, we find ourselves dealing with readers who think that their letters are editorials, that editorials are columns, and that columns are editorials as well. (Perhaps we should include a scorebook.) This column you’re reading now — please note that this is a column, not an editorial — was born at The Dunkirk News and Sun and joined The CR in 1998.

Why does any of this matter?

Because we’d like to get as many voices as possible in the newspaper.

We love letters to the editor. But regular — even intermittent — columns by folks in our community have tremendous potential.

About a year ago, I returned from helping to judge the California Newspaper Publishers Association contest. I had been blown away by the best editorial pages that I’d read. They were rich with local voices.

We’d love to be so rich.

About the same time, I started nagging my old friend Ron Cole about writing a column. I’ve known he could write for years, but I set just one rule: Write six, and then we’ll see.

In Ron’s case, the six were strong and more are piling up. The column’s now part of the Saturday edition of The CR, though it’s not yet clear whether we’re going to run it weekly or bi-weekly.

So why am I telling you all this?

Because I think you may have a voice too.

Nothing would make me happier than to have an editorial page dominated by local voices, with the syndicated pundits pushed out of the limelight.

Is that you?

Write six, and then we’ll see.[[In-content Ad]]