Bloggers As Guest Editorial Writers -- What A Great Idea!

October 31st, 2005 3:17 PM

Bill Steigerwald writes for the Pittsburgh Tribune Review:

The New York Times and The Post -- living up to their left-liberal-Democrat reputations -- don't come close to achieving more than a sliver of ideological diversity. The entrenched liberals running the opinion shops at the Big Three are not genuinely interested in maximizing their ideological diversity. If they were, they could try some really radical stuff. They could, for example, allow folks from magazines, Internet sites and think tanks to guest-edit a whole page each week. Rich Lowry of National Review, Russ Rymer of Mother Jones, Nick Gillespie of Reason and countless other idea-mongers would probably do it for free. So would super-bloggers like Andrew Sullivan or Rush Limbaugh.

Welcome to the party, Bill. That's actually a great idea and Rush has already done it for the Wall Street Journal. As for the New York Times, I don't think it will ever happen.

Power is not derived from objectively telling others what happened yesterday, it comes from telling others what they should think about a given subject, and The New York Times is first and foremost a power company, not a news company. Don't hold your breath waiting for them to share this power with those they disagree with.