Editorials, unlike other articles that appear in this newspaper, don't have bylines. The name of the person who writes it doesn't appear at the top - or the bottom - of each editorial. That's because the editorials represent the voice of The Sun, not of any one individual. They reflect the paper's abiding values and core concerns. The editorial page speaks for the publisher, but in a broader sense, it speaks for The Sun and its history. We like to think of it as the soul of the newspaper.
So, who's this "we," anyway? Somebody has to write about those values and concerns, craft the words that weigh the pros and cons, set down those hard-won conclusions. The editorial page and its accompanying Opinion
Commentary page are the products of a cadre of writers, editors and support staff who remain largely anonymous throughout the year; today we continue our near-annual practice of letting you know who we are.
The writers and editors constitute the editorial board, a deliberative body that meets four times a week and formulates the opinions that appear under the "Editorial" heading, thereby determining The Sun's editorial policies. It's an eclectic bunch, as it should be. Liberals and conservatives, city dwellers and suburbanites, journalists with the expertise to write about Baltimore and Bangladesh.
Our political cartoonists represent their own views, not those of The Sun, through their art.
On the editorial page, our goals are to educate, to inform and to persuade. Closer to home, our mission is to promote the betterment of Maryland, the region and the city of Baltimore.
We don't get to write our "own" opinions, but we play a very active role in shaping and articulating the opinions of this newspaper. Most of us came from the newsroom, but as editorial writers and editors we are now completely separate from that department. It does objective news; we do informed opinion. Not everybody agrees with us - not all the time, anyway. That's why we have the letters column and Opinion
Commentary page - to give other voices an opportunity to be heard.
As journalists, we believe that the more voices, the better. We may not agree with them any more than some agree with our editorials. But we know a healthy, intelligent debate is critical to our future - not just the future of this newspaper, but of a free society.
The Board
Dianne Donovan
Hard to believe it's been nearly a year since my first trip to Baltimore, when I came to talk with Sun executives about joining the paper as a vice president and editorial page editor. My husband and younger son came as well, and they'd been here less than an hour when they stumbled upon a stabbing-in-progress on Light Street. Welcome to Baltimore! We decided to move here anyway - that's how impressed we were with the present attractions and future promise of this ever-surprising city.
I spend my weekdays - and some nights - editing the editorial and op-ed pages and moderating four-day-a-week editorial board meetings. On weekends and in spare moments, my family and I try to make like the natives: eating crabs in Brooklyn, heading for the Eastern Shore, gaping at Christmas lights in Hampden, buying flowers and fish at Cross Street Market, picnicking at Fort McHenry.
Chicago was home for the last 25 years - I was with the Chicago Tribune, a sister paper of The Sun, for 22 of them - but the beautiful old rowhouses in Baltimore and the rolling horse country outside it are starting to feel pretty darn familiar (all that snow has helped a lot). We're making friends, learning the ropes and putting down roots - it's a good feeling in a fine place to be.
Stephen Henderson
In a way, I've been writing for editorial pages since I was 14 or 15. The main difference now is that this one actually publishes some of my stuff.
As a teen-ager, I sent an endless stream of letters and columns to my hometown Detroit Free Press, but the editors apparently thought them most appropriate for the circular files.
No matter. Even then, I knew the world of written argument was for me. By my junior year at the University of Michigan, I was an intern on the Free Press' editorial page. Later, I was an editorial writer for that paper and another in Lexington, Ky. I've also been a reporter in Detroit, at the Chicago Tribune and at The Sun. I joined the editorial board here as associate editor in 1999.
Besides handling editing responsibilities for The Sun's unsigned opinions, I also contribute my own editorials - mostly about the city's criminal justice system, the death penalty and gun control.
Baltimore and Maryland face no shortage of problems, but I've found the people here have a wealth of ideas and passion about fixing them. I've enjoyed learning about this community and writing about its challenges.
Jean Thompson
I am the oldest daughter of six children born to an East Coast family that was transplanted to Los Angeles by the computer and defense industries.
This may account for my seemingly contradictory rapport with pinstriped executives, hip-hop teen-agers and military brass: Live and let live, I say.
I'm a diehard city dweller and a collector of African-American historical papers and vintage photographs, music, books and art.
In my 20 years in journalism, at three newspapers, I have written and edited stories about small town rivalries and big city blues, immigrants and Navy submariners, celebrity chefs and disenfranchised communities.
I've had a vantage point from which to observe human nature at its best and at its worst. For me, the opinion and commentary pages benefit from a healthy sense of outrage when appropriate.
I've been at The Sun since 1988, working as a reporter, editor and administrator. I joined this department 11 months ago as an associate editor. I often write about education issues, ranging from the national perspective right down to what's happening in this region's classrooms.
Todd Windsor
I was born in Baltimore and grew up in Bel Air. My family has lived in Maryland as far back as any of us can tell, mostly on the Eastern Shore (my grandfather was a waterman). I love Ravens football, steamed crabs and weekends in Ocean City, and appreciate them even more after being out of state for a while.
I came to The Sun in 2000 after nine years with the St. Petersburg Times in Florida, where you can't get a decent crab cake. I was a page designer and editor at the Times, and received a Silver Medal from the Society for News Design in 1996 for my work on a special section about a Tampa honors student killed while buying a $10 bag of marijuana. Before that, I was a copy editor at the News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C.
As production editor at The Sun, my duties are numerous. I'm the copy editor for the editorial and Opinion
Commentary pages, which means it's my job to catch and correct mistakes and inconsistencies and to write the headlines.
I'm also responsible for the design of the pages, including the selection of art to illustrate op-ed pieces.
Robert Benjamin
The wonderful thing about working for newspapers is that, if you're halfway paying attention, it's hard not to learn something every day.
In more than 25 years as a writer and editor - mainly at The Sun - I've had license to see half the world and pass through an incredible array of lives, from prime ministers to paupers. In that sense, my favorite assignment was nearly five years traveling around China and much of Asia as the paper's Beijing bureau chief. Writing editorials, which I began in March, is hardly as exotic as, say, traipsing around Tibet, but the world still comes to my door every day.
These days, my main editorial interests are Asia, the national economy and corporate reforms and regional development issues, such as sprawl. But I've had the chance to weigh in on everything from civil liberties to children's backpacks, from the Big Bang theory to baseball. Like newspapering in general, this delicious buffet is a real privilege, a great education and a lot of fun.
On my mother's side I'm descended from bandits. They eventually settled down, and I grew up on the last remnant of what had been the family farm in downstate New York. As a boy I didn't shoot squirrels.
The suburbs were all around and they gave me a hankering to see the world. I began with Baltimore, in 1977; it didn't look anywhere near as bad as it was portrayed in those days. I took a job and thought I'd stay five years, tops. It wasn't the first time I'd been wrong, and it won't be the last.
Thanks to The Sun, though, I've had the chance to wander a bit. I've been frostbitten above the Arctic Circle, and have sat on a foul beach in India, sipping sweet milky tea with shipbreakers while huge tankers were being cut to scrap in front of us. I've seen an olive ranch in California and a fishing village on Lake Baikal.
These are the sorts of things I write about: labor (and the immigration that goes with it), farming, the environment; also, Central Asia and the former Soviet countries, and the American role in those distant places.
Richard C. Gross
Being editor of the Opinion Commentary page for more than two years has been one of the most challenging and frustrating experiences of a journalism career that spans more than three decades on three continents. It's been challenging to decide what will make the page consistently interesting to our readers and frustrating because I'm interested in everything; there's no space for everything.
I envision the op-ed page as a forum for a wide variety of opinions, many not mine. My goal is to ensure that our readers will be informed about the most important issues and trends of the day - in Baltimore, regionally, nationally and abroad.
A native New Yorker, I came to opinion journalism from hard news, more than 23 years of that with United Press International, including stints as a correspondent in Israel, the Balkans and at the Pentagon before having the world at my fingertips as foreign editor. I left in 1990 for the foreign desk of the Washington Times and joined The Sun in April 2000. I've lived in the Washington area for 22 years and I commute daily.
Karen Hosler
I must have a passion for politics, policy and musty old buildings. I've spent most of my reporting career in the State House, the White House or the U.S. Capitol and loved (almost) every minute of it.
When I got out of those buildings, it was mostly to hit the campaign trail. I've seen a lot of the country from the window of some candidate's bus.
Now, as an editorial writer, my experience at the state and federal level comes together to help me analyze the new twists and turns in stories that sometimes have been developing for decades. I know where lots of the bodies are buried.
Though born in Niagara Falls, N.Y., I call myself a homegrown tomato because I grew up in Prince George's County, graduated from the University of Maryland and have lived most of my adult life in Annapolis.
I try to spend as much time as possible on horseback, but also put in some miles distance running. What I learn from these and other outings with friends and family also finds its way into The Sun's editorial pages.
Ann Lolordo
I'm a former Middle East correspondent and national reporter for The Sun. I began my career at the paper like many young reporters, working the police beat.
I'm a native New Yorker who comes from a large extended Italian family, which accounts for my great shrimp scampi and often colorful use of language. At one time in my young life, I fancied myself the next Ethel Merman. But intellect got the best of me; a graduate of Georgetown University and the Johns Hopkins University, I'm a poet at heart. One day I hope to have my manuscript of poems, An Otherwise Perfect Wife, published.
I write about the Middle East, social issues and religion. But my latest interest is my newborn son.
Antero Pietila
I am the only Sun editorial writer whose mother tongue is not English (I am originally from Finland), who dropped out of high school and who worked on a freighter. That's how I first visited the United States in 1964.
Three years later, I returned to study at Southern Illinois University. In 1969, with a master's degree under my belt, I joined The Sun.
After a rocky start as a police reporter - my English was pretty much limited to a political science vocabulary - I wrote obituaries, did rewrite, covered education, religion, Baltimore County and City Hall. In 1980, I established The Sun's bureau in Johannesburg, South Africa. Three years later, I went to Moscow for a five-year stint. (Since apartheid crumbled and communism collapsed, some people suspect I bring bad luck to those in power).
I live in a rancher in Cheswolde with my wife, Barbara, a quilter and basket maker, and our dog, Emily. My adopted city fascinates me. That's why I mostly write editorials about Baltimore City.
Franz Schneiderman
I came to Baltimore in the late 1980s as a graduate student of politics and political theory. I found that Charm City had become home and I had the privilege of joining The Sun and putting together its letters pages.
What's exciting about my job as letters editor is that it gives me the chance not only to participate in the region's public life, but to see what stirs the passions of our readers. Reading the several hundred letters we get each week, I see the good, the bad and sometimes, yes, the ugly. Yet each week I still find letters that prompt a catch in my throat or make me think differently about an issue.
I think of myself as the referee of a public forum. I try to find letters that express readers' concerns and offer interesting and controversial views of public issues while keeping the discussion logical, tactful and tolerant.
I know readers are frustrated that we can't use all of their letters or that we shorten many of those we print. But I try to get as many different perspectives and voices on the page as possible.
So if your letter doesn't make it into print, please don't be discouraged. Keep writing. Try to be succinct and clear and respectful of others. And I'll try to get your voice on our pages.
C. Fraser Smith
Almost everything I know about newspapers, I learned at The Jersey Journal in Jersey City, N.J. What I learned was this: I loved it. My feet didn't hit the ground for six months. I started there a few weeks before John F. Kennedy was assassinated. A friend of mine at the paper encouraged me to believe that even a three-paragraph story had to be polished and perfect. I've been trying to meet his expectations ever since.
At The Sun, I've covered Baltimore City Hall, the courts of appeal, the General Assembly and the Maryland delegation in Washington.
As an editorial writer, I handle state government and politics. In addition, I write a column of my own opinion and analysis that appears on the Sunday op-ed page.
The Political Cartoonists
Kevin "KAL" Kallaugher
After graduating from Harvard College with honors in 1977, I embarked on a bicycle tour of the British Isles. There, I played semi-professional basketball and drew caricatures of tourists in Trafalgar Square until March 1978 when The Economist magazine of London recruited me to become its first resident cartoonist in its 145-year history.
I joined The Sun in 1988 after 10 years of drawing for London's newspapers.
Today, my cartoons for The Sun and The Economist regularly appear in more than 100 publications worldwide.
I have published four volumes of my collected work and have won numerous awards, the most recent being the 2002 Berryman Editorial Cartoonist of the Year as presented by the National Press Foundation.
I am past president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists and have had one-man exhibits in London, New York, Washington and Baltimore.
Mike Lane
As the last editorial cartoonist for The Evening Sun, my cartoons have been collected by politicians since the Nixon administration (Henry A. Kissinger, Donald Rumsfeld); the trend has continued since my cartoons moved to The Sun.
I have won numerous awards, including the Sigma Delta Chi Excellence in Journalism award, the International Salon of Cartoons-Montreal, the City Paper Best Cartoonist honor and many others.
Widely syndicated, my work has appeared nationally and internationally in newspapers and in news and literary magazines. My favorite reprint was in the 100th anniversary edition of the National Geographic magazine.
The long-accepted place for hanging framed editorial cartoons is in the powder room. My cartoons are proudly exhibited in powder rooms in homes all over Baltimore.
The Support Staff
Peggy Moran, Secretary
Marc Block, Letters clerk