The Making of an Editorial Page
Because I have been reading The Wall
Street Journal since I was a kid I looked forward to reading “Free People, Free
Markets..” George Melloan did not let me down and as a former reporter,
columnist and deputy editor of the editorial page has written a definitive
history of The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page. He covers the page’s
evolving politics and personalities during it’s over a century history. He is
particularly adept at chronicling the roles of Vermont Royster and Robert
Bartley in shaping the page from the 1950s to the dawn of the 21st
Century. It was those two editors who catapulted the page into a major force in
conservative thought and American journalism. And Melloan had a ringside seat in writing
those editorials and serving as Bartley’s deputy.
To me the highlight of the book was
Melloan’s recounting his commute from New Jersey into Manhattan on 9/11. I made
the same commute on a different New Jersey Transit line and witnessed the
second plane hitting the World Trade Center. I worked next door to the then WSJ
headquarters and immediately went home. Melloan had a paper to put out and by
the efforts of their heroic staff the WSJ was put together at their Princeton
printing plant. It was journalistic grace under fire.
What perhaps made the editorial page was
their walk on the supply-side in the late 1970s where fiscal orthodoxy was
abandoned in favor of broad-based tax cuts. The results came a few years later
with the Reagan revolution.
I have a few quibbles though. Sometimes
the book reads like a very long newspaper article. I would have liked to see
full reprints of a dozen or so editorials that Melloan considers to be the most
important. Lastly Melloan leaves out the views of the editorial board prior to
America’s entry into World War II. My guess he was not proud of them, but they
should have been discussed for the sake of history.
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