An Extra Nickel's Worth

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Articles by less famous polemicists have also had considerable impact. From exile in Algiers, Black Panther Richard Moore wrote a piece accusing Panther Huey P. Newton of substituting slogans for action, castigating the Times as "the organ of the ruling class" and condemning the "Fascist Farce of a Trial Presided over by the evil likes of [Judge] John Murtagh," from whose court Moore had fled. As the Times clearly intended, its Op-Ed has provided an occasional beam of fresh light on familiar topics. Edward C. Banfield, a professor of government at Harvard, described "the lower class" as not necessarily poor, not necessarily black, but clearly distinguishable from the working class because of its "inability (or, at any rate, failure) to take account of the future and to control impulses." Shortly after Charles Reich provided Op-Ed with a capsule summary of his forthcoming The Greening of America, Philosopher Marcuse complained in print, somewhat surprisingly, that Reich's euphoric dream treatise "transfigures social and political radicalism into moral rearmament."

Inevitably, Op-Ed's quest for originality sometimes falls flat. Getting Britain's Racist M.P. Enoch Powell, whose political knowledge of Viet Nam is at best limited, to write about U.S. foreign policy did not make much sense journalistically. On other occasions, the Times seems to encourage those who disagree with its editorial policy to put their worst foot forward. Superhawks propounding a pro-military Viet Nam policy on the page, for instance, tend either to be poor writers or to propose badly organized arguments.

More Palatable. Op-Ed is the brainchild of Editorial Page Editor John Oakes, who for eight years before it began had been arguing in memos to the Times's publishers that the paper needed a wider range of opinions than its columnists provided. Publisher Arthur O. ("Punch") Sulzberger took the occasion of a price hike from 100 to 150 last fall to introduce Op-Ed, thereby giving readers a small bonus for their nickel. While Oakes has overall command, operating responsibility for the page rests with Harrison Salisbury. Last July, Salisbury started soliciting contributions for the page, offering a modest $150 fee. He leaned on big names at the start to attract attention, but consistently stressed "the interest and importance of an idea" regardless of an author's fame.

Roughly one of every four published essays is unsolicited; about 25 volunteer contributions arrive on Salisbury's desk every day. The initially heavy—perhaps too heavy—emphasis on politics has expanded into a broader and more palatable mix. Recent Op-Ed pages have included such bemusingly bizarre articles as an ecological dialogue (in free verse) between Technologist R. Buckminster Fuller and Senator Edmund Muskie and a tense, dramatized first-person account by a white churchman of a late-night subway ride through Harlem.