As I think I have told you before, I view one of my job duties as “fill in the gaps as needed.” That might mean writing a simple story if a reporter is not available, or helping the section editors with editing stories and giving the reporters some feedback. I write editorials and curate the opinion pages when Greg Jayne is absent or otherwise occupied.
I look up the climate forecast and write the outlook sentence that goes in the monthly weather graphic. And I write the “editor’s poll,” which appears toward the bottom of our home page, www.columbian.com.
The poll, of course, is not really a poll. Real polls are designed by data scientists who know how to reach out to respondents who are statistically representative of the intended demographic. The questions are written in such a way as to be neutral. The responses are carefully compiled. And for all of these services, the pollsters deservedly earn a fat fee.
Our editor’s poll is meant to be a form of audience engagement. We want readers to interact with our page in ways that go beyond clicking on a story. I don’t have the skill to make the poll scientific, but I try to make it interesting, with a mix of topics that include not only asking readers about their views on the news, but how the news affects them. And, like everything else we do, I try to keep it locally focused.
