A wasteland of an editorial page

The Chronicle editorial page seems like such a wasteland much of the time.

One would think that the editorial page of the only major daily in the state's largest and the nation's fourth-largest city would be a powerful voice.

Instead, the regular columnists are dinosaur lefties and mediocre writers to boot, the "other" voice snippets are really just repetitive voices (echoes), the selection of syndicated columns is unimaginative, and the house editorials are frequently nonsensical.

And then there are the just-plain-bizarre editorials that appear, such as this one from one of the printing press managers:

Upside to driving: I gave lift and got lift from riders -- Conversation reveals how worldly Houston's become

Doesn't he realize that Houston's only become world class because of the rail?

Anyway, I guess this was the Chronicle's best effort at duplicating ttweak's approach to marketing Houston. It's not offensive (like some of their efforts). It's just not much of anything. And it shouldn't be what a great (or even good) newspaper does with its editorial page.

But we don't have a great (or even good) newspaper. We have the Chronicle. And we have an editorial page that's just a snooze.

That's where hyperlocal blogs (such as this one) come into play. We're still feeling our way through this little project, but obviously we're going to continue in 2005 with plenty of commentary you won't see on the Chron's editorial page, or in the tired Houston Press. Other local blogs will be providing plenty of commentary as well. And I hope to see more commentary from readers on the message board (such as the recent post from John Coby to a recent post on Tom DeLay). In short, the Houston blog community will be having a conversation about things that matter in our city.

We'll leave editorializing about the heretofore unexplored psychological satisfaction of park-and-ride commuting and offering leftovers to one's neighbors to the city's only newspaper.

Posted by Kevin Whited @ 12/28/04 09:26 PM | Houston Media | Technorati | Sphere | Comments (1)

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