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We've been running Short Stack in place of editorials on Mondays for a few months now. Our reasons:
It gives the page a different look once a week.
It lets us hit some topics that might not warrant a full editorial.
The format lends itself more readily to occasional attempts at humor, or at least a somewhat breezier style.
Ideally, some Short Stack items would more closely resemble what you might read in a blog than in a traditional newspaper editorial.
What do you think?
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Comments (3)
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I am not a big fan of short stacks. I prefer more substantial, nutritious meals in my editorials. Humor columnists are as ubiquitous as kudzu. The editorial cartoons pull a lot of that weight alone. I appreciate it more often when the editors of your paper articulate well-reasoned opinions as a hard-won consensus, expressing condemnation or endorsement not of any personal public figure, but of policies and favoritism, graft or waste.
Posted on July 31, 2007 8:14 PM
Jim, thanks for the constructive criticism.
More feedback, anyone?
Posted on August 1, 2007 2:38 PM
I had e-mailed Allen complaining, along the same lines as Jim, about the short stacks when they first appeared. Leave the sound bites to TV stations. Newspapers have a unique format that allows contributors to provide reasons for their opinions and assertions. Very few things are black or white. Longer editorials allow the contributor to sort some of these issues out.
Also, there has been a tendency to be a bit snarky in the short stack pieces. There seems to be less of that in the longer pieces, which suggests that the writers themselves take the longer ones more seriously.
Posted on August 1, 2007 11:57 PM