
                         THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
                 Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, June 7, 1994                    TAG: 9406070006 
SECTION: FRONT                     PAGE: A14    EDITION: FINAL  
SOURCE: Medium 
DATELINE: 940607                                 LENGTH:

EDITORIAL PAGES `DULL, ONE-NOTE READ'

{LEAD} The best thing about your new downbeat conservative approach on the editorial pages is the time gained each day by skipping it altogether. Under the new editorial-page editor's hand, the editorial and op-ed pages have become a dull, one-note read, not an honest effort at presenting all points of view but an early-morning shot of rhetorical heroin to tide the Stonehenge conservatives over until WNIS AM and the 700 Club get going.

At its best, the new editorial page can deliver adequate obits to deceased world figures like Richard Nixon and Jackie Kennedy Onassis. At its worst, it has compounded the mistake of an unwise editorial, such as slamming the Beach School Board election results, with more of the same.

{REST} In this instance, in a subsequent Another View, the editorial page lent itself as a crying towel to local Republican Sean Gerety, who perhaps did permanent damage to future ``Kids First'' slates with his crude slur at Beach voters as being ``a devoted cadre committed to keeping our schools headed on the same downward spiral.''

I was surprised and disappointed, because I had been used to regarding an Another View as just that: a thoughtful and dignified counterpoint to an ``official'' editorial-page editorial, not a litter box for some extremist to wallow around in.

The induction of the bland new four-for-a-dollar conservatives to the op-ed page was like adding 40 more miles of bad road to the end of a destination. On the worst days you'll have a pair of the new ones teamed up with old Cal Thomas in a three-on-one against Ellen Goodman or patsy liberal Richard Cohen.

Perhaps wrongly, I always perceived Michigan conservatives to be in the mold of Gerald Ford - positive people working to achieve the legitimate goal of limiting government. If the new editorial-page editor's work in Norfolk is indicative of what he was doing in Motor City, readers there must have been dancing in the street the day he left town.

RICK KRIPPENDORS

Virginia Beach, May 24, 1994

by CNB