As the school year starts and the Elon University campus comes to life, The Pendulum begins reporting on a number of local, national and world stories. In each print edition, the opinions section devotes one full page to an editorial topic that expresses The Pendulum’s stance on a topic the editorial board feels important for Elon students to consider. In short, the editorial expresses the opinion of the organization as a whole, not simply one writer.
By nature, opinions pieces generate more impassioned reaction, and the editorial is especially prone to very strong feedback from both sides of a topic. Following a year where a number of editorials received a large amount of discussion — both critiques and support — on a slew of issues, The Pendulum would like to take a moment to reestablish the importance and process of writing an editorial for each edition.
Despite occasional negative criticism and heated comments, The Pendulum reaffirms the importance of editorial topics that generate conversation around campus and open up students to different ways of seeing an opinion. The editorial is more than just a single column because it embodies the work of an entire staff. The Pendulum takes the content and the topic of the editorial extremely seriously and always aspires to pick a subject that will generate thought on campus.
The process to write, edit and print the editorial truly demonstrates a team effort which multiple editors coordinate. The editor-in-chief, managing editor, opinions editors and a student representative all meet multiple times in order to thoroughly discuss a topic with real world implications that can still directly relate to Elon. Having a student who represents and researches student opinion on campus especially adds an element to the editorial that is unique in its ability to blend together both staff and student thought.
[quote]With a potentially divisive topic, remember that no matter your stance on an issue, the editorial means to generate productive and lasting conversation.[/quote]
By choosing a topic that can be seen everywhere from world headline news to Elon’s own campus and finding a way to explain its importance to college students as a whole, the editorial aims to be a beneficial mainstay of the paper that can foster the types of opinion and emotion a typical news story might not.
Since it does reflect the opinion of the paper as a whole, the editorial is not attributed to one author, an idea that can cause confusion among some readers. The purpose behind not revealing the name of the author each week serves to represent the idea that it truly is a team effort, where one writer simply conveys the opinion of the staff as a whole.
Furthermore, the editorial takes into consideration the opinion of every single staff member of The Pendulum and throughout the writing process receives an abundance of feedback before the writing process even begins. The Pendulum wholeheartedly believes an editorial remains a pertinent element of the paper for students and teachers alike.
With a potentially divisive topic, remember that no matter your stance on an issue, the editorial means to generate productive and lasting conversation. A successful editorial is intended to produce a large amount of feedback from all opinions and sides of an issue. Without a dialogue between two opposing sides, the editorial is no longer a call to action or a conversation between two parties. If it is written to a single unified and complacent student body, the editorial becomes an echo chamber for what is already agreed upon. And even in the face of disagreement or disapproval, we at The Pendulum can feel better knowing our work has moved the discussion forward, even at our own expense.
The Pendulum welcomes all commentary in order to continue improving the editorial with each new edition. As always, The Pendulum seeks to be the voice of the Elon student body, and the mouthpiece for the stories they need to hear. And while news stories remain the bulk of our content, the editorial is our way of interacting as a staff with the rest of Elon as a whole. And without the feedback and even criticism of our readers and subscribers, we lose our ability to spur discussion. So as we continue to provide our take on the issues at hand, remember to provide us with yours. We’ll have our eyes on the comments section.