Matt Bramanti took apart a Friday Chronicle editorial over at the Lone Star Times, asking “does anybody read this stuff before press time?”
By paragraph, the editorial went something like this:
- Senate committee hearings on energy company profits were a charade.
- Republicans were left to “feign hostility” during the hearings. Barbara Boxer’s hostility is genuine.
- Oil execs had to endure the lecture, since they were bribed by tax cuts and permission to pollute.
- Taxing high profits will hurt supply, potentially bringing back gas lines. Besides, high prices encourage conservation.
- Execs say rising demand has boosted prices, but it’s really profligate consumption by Americans, who make long drives from where they live and to shop!
- Expanding offshore drilling would boost energy supplies.
- Oil companies have a public duty.
- Energy companies should increase their charitable giving to help Houston’s neediest residents
- Energy companies should increase their charitable giving to arts organizations to help Houston’s neediest residents!
Bramanti blasted the questionable assertions contained in paragraph 9, but our amazement isn’t with the error density of the editorial (which isn’t especially high by Chron editorial page standards). Rather, it’s the fact that the editorial doesn’t advance any coherent view, but is instead a hodge podge of disparate paragraphs all advancing pet editorial idealist themes.
It’s almost as if James Howard Gibbons decided they were going to write a nine-paragraph editorial on energy companies, and then passed around a hat to draw lots, so each editorial board member could participate by writing a paragraph, with the end result being a jumbled mess.
Here’s a suggestion to James Howard Gibbons on how the editorial process ought to work: Poll your editorial board and try to decide what a majority of the board thinks about some issue. Assign a single editorial board member primary responsibility to write the thing. Circulate it among the rest of the board for comments. Revise. And by all means, read the thing for style, factual accuracy, and logical consistency before you commit it to print!
As an aside, we also noted the editorialists’ use of the term “city with global ambitions.” Would those be “world class” aspirations?
MORE: Tom Kirkendall points to this sensible, internally consistent Washington Post editorial on the hearings, oil companies and high profits.
