Editorials & Other Articles

I worked for a metro daily paper (a Pulitzer winner) for 37 years. I worked on the copy desk the last decade or so when I was there. It was EXTREMELY important that headlines be accurate. Anything we edited (the stories, the headlines) were run by our copy desk chief. The headlines weren't accepted automatically and would get turned back to you to rewrite if the copy chief thought they were inaccurate. Now I don't know how it works at those two papers now, but I suspect there is a mode of accuracy on headlines now. But I have to say there are stories that are run now that I as an editor would have never approved. As far as the way stories are edited, that's subjective. But I have to say that there were criteria we would follow when editing. I still believe much of that is still followed today. And I'll say again that news stories and opinion stories are two different animals. If you read an opinion story you don't agree with, don't lose any sleep over it. Opinion pieces have been in newspapers for centuries and have been causing controversy forever. As Walter Cronkite used to day, "That's the way it is."