Fixing the op-ed page

In comments on Erik’s Douthat post below, there is some discussion of the staggering and utter vacuity and general uselessness of the non-Krugman* op-ed writers there. Erik promises a post on who, ideally, should be occupying those roles. While I have some ideas myself, I want to instead question the model? Why 6-7 people writing twice a week? The defects of this model seem obvious to me. First, if you take writing with such a platform and built-in audience as seriously as you should, the demands of doing it twice a week would be quite grueling. (Coates explains why he didn’t want the job in such terms here.) This creates two problems. One, even great writers strain to find something worth saying that often. Two, it creates pressure/incentives to focus on whatever the ‘story of the moment’ is, which is often some pointless journalistic obsession about which there is very little of interest to say.

My preferred model would look something like this: a stable of 30-50 regular writers, drawing from academics, journalists, and others who have something to day, but wouldn’t or couldn’t commit to a full time op-ed job. When someone uses the platform to pursue an important story over several columns (say, Herbert on Tulia) bump them up in the rotation accordingly. Lots of rotation in and out of the pool; perhaps an “emeritus” status for people who’ve retired from regular contributions but might have something worth saying once or twice a year.

The benefits seem obvious: less tendencies toward village group-think, more thoughtful contributions, less “story of the week” silliness, more people writing about something they actually know about, etc. Insofar as Nick Kristoff identified an actual problem, it would create a venue for sustained public intellectual work by important scholars who couldn’t or don’t want to commit to the level of commitment Krugman has.

Setting aside the “feature not a bug” reasons some might want to retain the current model, I can’t really conceive of the advantages of the current model over this one.