Tim Noah: "Eliminate the editorial page."

Or maybe just reserve it for the right occasions. Stultifying as it usually is, the Big Voice Editorial can still be useful. Last week, for example, as good as Allen Johnson was on Jesse Helms by blog and column, it meant something to hear the Newspaper Itself weigh in on an issue of substance. If you only used it sparingly, it would be more powerful.

I bet a lot of people who aren't news junkies get a lot of their news from those editorials.

Here's a situation where I found the editor's blog post on an important topic more effective than the formal editorial. My take then was that it might be time for the paper to replace "staid, measured editorials with the good stuff from its own ed-page blogs."

Maybe the mix is the thing. The N&R edit page is more transparent than most, because both Allen and Doug Clark write columns and weblogs.