A CLASSIC EDITORIAL IS
ENDURING AND TIMELY
I first posted a link to Vermont C. Royster’s classic Christmas editorial in December 2013. At that time, The Wall Street Journal, of which Royster had been editorial page editor (from 1958 to 1971), made it a practice to reprint the essay every Christmas.
With the acquisition of the Journal by News Corp. and the establishment of a paid “firewall” around its online site, I don’t know if that practice has continued. But it certainly should.
“Roy” Royster had retired by the time I came to work at Dow Jones (then owner of the Journal) a couple years later, so I never got to meet him. However, as a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, he was still very much a presence in the company. And I always made it a point to read the weekly column he continued providing after he assumed a chair in Journalism and Public Affairs at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, his alma mater.