Conversation Starter

From The Washington Post Writers Group
Posted by James Hill on June 19, 2009

If the good Lord’s willin’ and the creek don’t rise, we plan to go live on this Web site next week with a project that I hope — fingers crossed — generates a lot of talk and maybe even a little buzz.

We call it Editorial Roundtable, and it will take the form of a conversation that editorial director Alan Shearer and I will have with a Board of Contributors made up of editorial page editors from around the country. The idea is to pose a question to the contributors about their thinking on the crucial issues of the day — and ask them to tell us how they develop their approaches for their commentary. Then, once the Roundtable has been posted, we ask readers to join the conversation.

Our debut Board of Contributors is a stellar one, and I can vouch for all because they are professional friends I have come to know mostly through my association with the National Conference of Editorial Writers.

They are: Harry Austin, editor of The Chattanooga Times editorial page in The Chattanooga Times Free Press; Dick Hughes, editorial page editor of the Statesman Journal in Salem, Ore.; J.R. Labbe, editorial director of The Fort Worth Star-Telegram; Mary Ann Lindley, editorial page editor and columnist for the Tallahassee Democrat; Mark Mahoney, editorial page editor of The Post-Star in Glens Falls, N.Y., and recipient of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing, and Dan Radmacher, editorial page editor of The Roanoke (Va.) Times.

In addition, I have asked Michael Bugeja, director of the Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication at Iowa State University of Science and Technology, to provide regular comments on the answers. I hope to enlist others to comment as well… Continue Reading