Editorial by committee

A camel, it's been said, is a horse created by committee.

Well, an editorial created by committee is likely to be just as ugly.

I suffered through the experience of putting one together last week. I was the original author, but the final product was not my work at all, but an amalgam of four different people -- and their writing styles. We ended up arguing over individual words and commas.

Don't get me wrong, we were all basically on the same page regarding the comment of the editorial. The disputes were over which words to use and which points to make in what order.

I have become more and more convinced over the years that editorials should be one person's voice (edited by others, of course, but the writing style left intact. Last week's experience only reaffirmed that.

This has been a brief aside from my normal worrying about the future of the industry.