Columnists, meet our readers. Readers, columnists. I have the honor of introducing to you today this semester's brand new columnists. These writers are one of the highlights of the paper, but can also be the bane. They just refuse to fit into an easy mold, which can be unbelievably frustrating for editors.
Columnists and editors, at the Daily and at other papers, usually exist in a sort of uneasy truce. The problem lies in the fact that columnists are not from the newspaper, and it is maddening for editors to observe 750 words every week that do not mix well with the newspaper's overall tone and style. But that is exactly why a newspaper needs them.
Columnists bring to the Daily that unheralded voice and those issues that are missed by the rest of the editorial staff. Their freedom to write what it is that they want to write bestows upon them the ability and the responsibility to cover topics in ways that a standard news, sports or arts article cannot.
Columnists speak for themselves, not for the newspaper. What they write represents their own thoughts and ideas and we as editors stay out of it - short of libelous or untrue statements that need to be changed.
In the past, former columnists like Rodrigo de Haro and Jonathan Pearle explained complicated and vast foreign policy issues in ways our articles never could. Drew Shelton wrote hilarious columns that a standard arts article could never capture. And who could forget the last two years of Amber Madison's sex advice?
And so this week I urge you to read all the new columns, which consists of nearly all of them. Adam Pulver is the only returning columnist this year, and he is a perfect example of the uneasy truce that columnists and editors share with his sharp criticisms of campus issues that sometimes makes me cringe.
But he is most certainly not the only example. Allison Roeser will be taking over for Sarah Dalglish as our "abroad" columnist, writing about her fascinating observations of Tokyo. Ben Hoffman's sports column highlights just the kind of issues that a post-game wrap-up is likely to miss. Saj Pothiawala has a column that will make you sit back and just laugh.
I do not mean to exclude the other nine columnists from the discussion, but I am beholden to the same word count restrictions as they.
Please, enjoy our columns, and I hope that in some cases, they will spark you to write Letters to the Editor and Viewpoints in response, and in other cases I hope that they lead to a smile in your 10:25 math class. In any case, the Daily has added over a dozen new voices to its pages this week, and I think you are going to like them.
