Who chooses those columnists?

Posted by Frank Gerjevic

Posted: June 18, 2008 - 4:46 pm

I do, much of the time. What am I looking for when I choose the national/international columnists and cartoons?

Good writing, passion, wit and range. We don't want oped pages that are home to just one ideology. That's why you'll read Paul Krugman on these pages, along with Charles Krauthammer. Cal Thomas and Robyn Blumner. Left and right and stops in between. I've got no interest in quotas or any PC notions. But I do make a conscious effort to get women and minority voices into the mix, to widen our range and try to tell more of the whole story.

Some of my favorites are those gems by people who aren't among the usual suspects - people with insight, experience, expertise in a particular subject or field and give us all something we didn't know before. They're not common.

If I had to choose just one columnist to run it would be Leonard Pitts of the Miami Herald. He writes with the qualities mentioned above, along with generosity of spirit and a sense of fair play.

Here's something else - I find that I mostly agree with Pitts, but not always. And when I don't, I find he's challenging the way I've thought about something. That can sharpen your own thinking, strengthen your convictions. Or open your mind to changing it.

Who do you like among our columnists and why? Let me know. And please tell me if there's a columnist you often disagree with, but always read - and not just to get your blood up, but to challenge you. Someone who might rile you to tear up the paper or hammer the daylights out of your keyboard, but with whom you'd still love to share a meal and conversation.

Thanks.

Frank Gerjevic

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