Title: Editorial Journalism and Newspapers’ Editorial Opinions | Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication
Headings: Editorial Journalism and Newspapers’ Editorial Opinions
Editorial Journalism and Newspapers’ Editorial Opinions
Summary
Keywords
Introducing Editorial Journalism
Editorial Journalism as a Distinct Genre and Practice
The History of Editorial Journalism
Newspapers’ Editorial Opinions and Partisanship
Editorials as Texts—Persuasive Style and Content
What Makes Editorial Journalism Unique?
Editorials and Other Forms of Opinion Journalism
The Significance of Editorial Journalism: Persuasive Power
Influence on Readers, Voters, and Public Opinion
Influence on Newspapers’ Internal News Agendas and Other Coverage
The Influence of Editorials on Other News Media, Political Elites, and Policymakers
Newspapers as Independent Political Actors
What Shapes Newspapers’ Editorial Positions?
Routines for Issue Selection, Deciding the Agenda, and the Line and Tone of Editorial Opinion
The Influence of Proprietors, Ownership, and Editors
Editorial Journalism and Diversity
Discussion of the Literature
References
Notes

Content: Finally, existing research trajectories and current developments point to new challenges and opportunities for editorial journalism. These challenges relate to how professional norms respond to age-old questions about objectivity, bias, and partisanship in the digital age. Keywords
editorials
editorial journalism
leader writing
opinion
advocacy journalism
campaign journalism
newspapers as political actors
press partisanship
media effects
opinion leading
journalism studies
Introducing Editorial Journalism
The potential for newspapers’ editorial opinions to influence voters and politicians has driven debate and scholarship to coalesce around editorial opinion as the most tangible manifestation of the power of the press. Elections are very often followed by public debate about the power of newspapers to shape the outcome. Indeed, newspapers are not averse to claiming responsibility for influencing voters, as evidenced by the notorious British tabloid headline “It’s the Sun wot won it” the day after the unexpected election of a Conservative government in 1992. Whether editorials have the power to change voters’ behavior is contested, yet much scholarship is based on the premise that newspapers’ opinions at least exert some influence in the construction of public knowledge: “ How editorial writers interpret and use facts and opinions to persuade, to set an agenda, or to scold can bring about an important different meaning for the reading public” (Hallock, 2007, p. 11). The distinctive role of editorials as the collective identity of a newspaper and their overt and deliberate persuasive intentions distinguish editorial journalism from other journalism. Our understanding of the significance of this distinctive form can be better understood by structuring an analysis of research and theoretical approaches to editorial journalism into four key themes. The first draws on research to define editorial journalism as a distinctive practice.