"Once a year, editors and columnists who belong to the National Conference of Editorial Writers can spend a day at the State Department in Washington for high-level briefings on subjects of concern. This year, purely by chance, we were there May 2, the day after the killing of Osama bin Laden, adding major drama to the occasion."

So began Ambassador Dan Simpson's superb account of the NCEW's State Department briefing in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, which can be seen in its entirety at http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11131/1145509-374-0.stm

Dan Simpson (in green tie) interviews Secy. of State Hillary Clinton.

Dick Hughes and Rena Pederson sit between them.

Froma Harrop, NCEW president

There's an interesting, but disturbing blog post by NPR's ombudsman about the organization's move to institute stricter monitoring of blog comments following an outbreak of vicious and ugly comments on a story reporting the brutal assault of a CBS correspondent covering the Egyptian riots.

This line caught my eye particularly: "Next task is re-evaluating creating a new system that outlaws anonymity. It stands to reason that people will behave more civilly if their real name and identity are public."

Eventually, I think, credible media organizations must block all anonymous comments. We don't allow anonymous letters. Why should we allow anonymous comments to live on our websites?

For a deeper discussion of this, including a contrasing point of view, take another look at the Masthead symposium on comments: here, here and here.

Dan Radmacher
President, NCEW

At long last, America's Opinions, NCEW's iPhone app, has been released. It has been a long time in the works, beginning with a multidisciplinary class at the Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri. There, a team of students worked with an NCEW committee led by Miriam Pepper of the Kansas City Star. The committee included me, Kate Reilly of the Seattle Times and Larry Reisman of Scripps Treasure Coast (FL) Newspapers.

We worked with the team of students - which incidentally included Julia Haslanger, Phil Haslanger's daughter - throughout the semester. Complications ensued after the semester ended, but with assistance from RJI's Tyten Teegarten and a friend of mine with some serious scripting skills, the application was finally completed.

Only members of NCEW can get their editorial feeds included, but the app is meant for widespread distribution to any reader interested in editorials and opinion journalism. Please promote it as widely as you can.

If you have not sent an RSS feed for us to include your paper in the app, please e-mail me now. The more newspapers that participate, the more valuable the app will be to readers.

If you download the app, you'll notice it still has some rough patches. If you know anyone with iOS development skills who could help us smooth those out, please let me know. Additionally, if you know anyone with experience developing for Android or other platforms who could help us port the app, send them my way.

Thanks for everyone whose effort made this app possible. Now, spread the word. America's Opinions could not only raise NCEW's profile, but the profile of editorial writing, as well.

Dan Radmacher
President
National Conference of Editorial Writers

For the past two years, NCEW has gone into overdrive to rethink, rework and re-energize the organization to respond to unprecedented change in the media industry. Now it�s time for NCEW and members to take the show on the road. Literally.

NCEW President Dan Radmacher has laid out a vision of a more vigorous role for NCEW in setting the tone for public discussion.  The Civility Project , as described by Radmacher and members of the NCEW board, will attempt to address the poisonous discourse that is polarizing our politics and undermining our democracy. The shape and reach of that project will emerge in weeks to come but its goal is clear: restore reason, fact and mutual respect to the community conversation.

NCEW members, working in their own communities, are already on the way down that path. Paul Hurley, editorial page editor at the Visalia Delta-Times in Visalia, Calif., partnered with a Visalia Presbyterian Church to create 210 Connect. Community issues are framed in the paper, promoted online and discussed, face to face, with local experts in a community hall in downtown Visalia. Luanne Rife, an editorial writer at the Roanoke Times in Roanoke, Va., started an online discussion group. Its members held widely divergent views but found community, common purpose and delight in civil conversation. Then they found common interests and pursuits and meet not just in cyberspace but in community spaces: on walking paths, hiking trails and public parks.

NCEW, with its renewed focus on its external mission, is also responding to another on-the-road trend. Readers want their news and views to come to them, but not on paper.  Apps, be they for iPhones, iPads, Androids or whatever new mobile technology sweeps the market, are the next frontier for media and for NCEW members. NCEW is in the final stage of creating an app that will allow you to search out local opinion from your mobile device. Newspapers everywhere are scrambling to develop the same.

Apps will change the delivery and the format of what we do. Just as you�ve gotten comfortable working online, now you�ll be challenged to develop opinion features that travel to and with readers. Will Websites disappear? Probably not, but opinions that sing on a 3-inch screen will be in demand.

The next question: Can the industry sell the apps and at what price? And is commentary distributed via the free app, the 99-cent app or the $9.99 a month app? (If you are sure readers will balk at paying for online/onphone/on iPad content, just remember TV viewers once watched shows broadcast for free over public airwaves to rooftop antennas. Today, 90 percent of Americans pay to receive television over cable, satellite or, increasingly, the Internet.)

So figuring out what it takes us to take the show on the road will continue as the technology (and the public�s appetite) evolves. I hope to weigh in on that discussion in coming weeks as a contributor to The Masthead, rather than its editor.

This is my final column as The Masthead editor. During my two years at the helm of our organization�s professional journal, I oversaw the transition of The Masthead from a quarterly magazine (black and white only!!!) to an integral part of NCEW�s new Website.  I took the job as NCEW was struggling to remake itself in the face of unprecedented change in the media industry while continuing to help its members learn the skills and practices they would need in the New Media world.

 Becca Rothschild, an NCEW member of long standing and a former editorial writer for the Detroit Free Press, is the new Masthead editor. I�ll tell you what I told her: You�ll work hard, you�ll figure out how to do things you didn�t think you could do, and you�ll find that NCEW members are simply the greatest.

Lois Kazakoff is the deputy editorial page editor of the San Francisco Chronicle. E-mail her at [email protected].

For my first "From the President" blog entry, I'm going to post the speech I delivered at the business meeting in Dallas. Comments and discussion are always welcome.

 I would love to stand up here and tell you that future for NCEW is so bright that we all need to wear shades. But all of us here know that this organization faces incredible challenges in the coming years � just as its members and the industry they toil in face incredible challenges.

As newspapers have cut staff and travel budgets, our membership has declined, along with attendance at conventions, striking at our two main sources of revenue.

But there is a more insidious risk lurking in those staff and budget cuts, and it has ramifications not just for NCEW�s budget and long-term viability, but for the very mission of this organization and the cause it has served for so long: improving the craft of editorial writing.

What is that risk? A pervasive de-emphasis on professional development.

Last year was certainly a better year in journalism than 2009, when news of layoffs came regularly and in multiples of 5,000. But all those layoffs have taken a toll. I don�t have the statistics to prove it, but discussions on the list-serve give me reason to believe that there are significantly more one-person editorial shops today than there were two or three years ago.

Not only that, but there are many more one-person shops in which that one person has significant duties other than the opinion pages.

Even in editorial shops that haven�t seen staffs decimated, more duties are falling on fewer shoulders. We�re blogging more. Hosting online chats. Typing in and verifying letters without the clerical assistance we once had.

All that leaves little time, and even less energy, to focus on improving what we do and how we do it.

Thus, we�ve seen participation in critiques � once the heart of NCEW�s convention � plunge to the point that we have begun to question whether we should continue to offer them.

For years, NCEW has actively encouraged its members to work together to put on regional conventions throughout the year. But finding opinion writers with the time and energy to do so has proven to be next to impossible.

NCEW has always been a member-driven organization, heavily dependent on the time, sweat and tears of a large group of devoted individuals � not just those who serve on the board, but those who work on the various committees and workgroups that make the things we do happen.

Those people have been harder to find, and harder pressed to carve out the time to do the volunteer work that brings such value to this organization.

So, my job, as I see it, in the coming year is to find ways that NCEW can help its members deal with these new realities and to focus all our efforts on areas that will bring the most immediate and clear benefit.

To do that job, I will need your help, your inspirations, your ideas � and, yes, your time, sweat and tears.

We have tools at our disposal. The ever-popular list-serv connects us at a moment�s notice to hundreds of other members who can provide advice, support, encouragement and the occasional silly diversion. NCEW�s Web site provides a foundation and a flexible framework that we have yet to begin to fully exploit.

But, as always, the most valuable tools we have are each other. Technology can better connect us and help us harness our resources. But, in the end, the best resources we have are the connections themselves, and the people at the heart of those connections.

Opinion writing is not a job for most of us. It is a mission and a calling. We bring different goals, approaches and ideologies to that calling, but our faith in the calling itself and its importance to a civil society is what binds us together. Our dedication to improving its practice is what will energize us in the year, and years, ahead, no matter what challenges we face.

Dan Radmacher
President
National Conference of Editorial Writers