Austin Bay’s great journalism

For quite some time editorials that have appeared on this page that did not address local news, i.e., statewide or national issues, in my opinion, were devoid of independent thought.

More often than not, they were begun with “according to,” “As reported by,” “In an editorial in the ...,” etc.

What followed was simply a regurgitation of a narrow, one sided narrative. The editorial published Friday Sept. 10, “Administration Word Games Can’t Hide Crisis,” was far different from the others.

With nary an “according to,” the editor used strong and powerful words and phrases to make her point. As I read it, all I was thinking was “Wow! Outstanding! This is actual journalism.”As an avid and daily reader of this page, for obvious but unstated reasons, I know this was a very difficult editorial to write, and equally difficult to publish.

I am very, very, very tempted to further pontificate on this editorial, specifically the phrases “clumsy, incompetent and haphazard” and “failures and ineptitude,” but I won’t. I will stay with the original intent of my letter, which is to express my appreciation for an original, well thought out, well written editorial.

John Phillip Benes

Littlerock

Editor’s note: The editor was on vacation when this editorial was run, therefore, a Creators Syndicate column by Austin Bay was run in the Focus section of the Opinion page.