What is an editorial?

We can’t count the number of times The Daily Campus has received complaints about an “article” being biased or about our “editorial” being too vitriolic.

Much of the time, however, the complainant is talking about the column run by an extremist arguing for the abolition of the government and a return to communal hunting and gathering groups.

So the Editorial Board would like to take a moment to set the record straight on the difference between articles, editorials and commentaries.

What you read on the opinion page of the paper is entirely biased. It’s supposed to be. It is the one space in our paper where our column writers, members of the community and Ed Board can argue their opinions on everything from the news of the day to things that have been bugging them.

Editorials, which appear in the upper left hand column of the opinion page, are the consensus opinion of the Editorial Board – a body made up of a cross section of the student body from different backgrounds and majors. Every week we sit down to discuss the issues facing the campus, the nation and the world and try to come to some stance that we can all agree on. (Thank goodness we have people to clean up the blood.)

The editorial represents the opinion of The Daily Campus as a whole. While they are written by individual members of the Ed Board, they are unsigned and meant to represent the entire body.

Columns, however, are all of the other opinions on the page. You’ll notice columns have a picture of the author beside them. Anyone on campus can submit a column to the page as long as they have something to opine about and can do so in a readable and fairly logical fashion. Sometimes even people who don’t and can’t make it onto the page too.

All other writing in The Daily Campus falls into the category of articles. We work to ensure that these pieces are objective (exempting articles such as reviews on the entertainment page) and cover all sides of the issue.

So if you think the guy arguing that midgets should get special treatment at football games is biased, he probably is.

And of course, if you’d like to help us churn out articles, editorials or columns, we’d love to have your help. Contact us at [email protected]