Strengthen, don't abandon, the institutional editorial: editorials help distinguish newspapers.

This past November and December, a brilliant and accomplished businesswoman I know gave over some of her "spare" weekends to tramp the wind-whipped rural precincts of Iowa on behalf of Hillary Clinton. It was the first time in her life she actively campaigned for anyone, so passionate is she about her candidate.

Late in the evening of December 15, she dashed in excitedly with a news flash for her husband: The Des Moines Register had just awarded Mrs. Clinton its prized endorsement in Iowa's Democratic caucus. Like hundreds of thousands of others, on all sides of the campaign spectrum, my friend had waited nervously for the newspaper to post its editorial on its Website.

The next evening at a Christmas party at her home, my friend told me that while she was admittedly partial on the matter, she had found the Register's editorial to be especially thoughtful. It carefully appraised Mrs. Clinton's strengths and weaknesses, and it gave her competitors credit for their own good qualities, before culminating in a firm, unambiguous endorsement. I went home and read the editorial, and I agreed it was an elegant piece of work.

My friend didn't mention the writer, not that she could have, and of course I didn't know who wrote it either. It wasn't signed. On this, the quadrennially central fact of life for Iowans and wanna-be Iowans, a group of bright, informed, experienced people inside The Des Moines Register had once again come together to hash out a decision. This editorial represented the paper's collective judgment.

A tad romantic, even anachronistic? Certainly--though hardly more romantic or anachronistic than the convoluted Iowa caucuses themselves.

Besides, we sophisticates and insiders know the endorsement process doesn't always quite work in so high-minded a fashion. Just as often an editorial board will carefully come to consensus around one candidate only to have the publisher swoop in, deus ex machina, to dictate the paper's formal support for another. Nothing romantic about that. But being wrong-headed is the newspaper's prerogative, too.

Nevertheless, the 2008 election cycle again reminds us of a fundamental truth--a newspaper's institutional voice, however it is derived, remains a powerful instrument--and I for one find the idea of giving that up foolish and silly.

This is not to say I oppose opening up the editorial and opinion pages to a far more dynamic and inclusive array of perspectives; by all means, let a thousand voices bloom. Long before the Internet, the opinion pages were a place of true interactivity with the audience. They must remain so, and more, with all the modern communication tools at a paper's disposal.

I also believe that the move to provide editorial-board members with personal columns or the occasional signed commentary is a highly constructive step. At many papers--most, perhaps--editorial writers are longtime reporters and observers, with deep community roots, who often stay abreast of such issues as transportation, health, the environment, or national security better than their news-side counterparts. We gain from their personal perspective.

But yield the Olympian institutional voice? Why would you? Why should you? In a world that feels increasingly like a latter-day Babel, to forgo the institutional pulpit would be to give up one of the few things left about newspapers that distinguish them from the blogosphere.

As with the Register's endorsement, the editorial represents the considered judgment of many intelligent people, not just one. Again, it was something of a forerunner of what is now considered an Internet-enabled movement, the "wisdom of the crowd."

In this hyper-competitive media environment, newspapers must do everything they can to become indispensable to their audiences. Over three centuries the industry has built a reputation--when it speaks with its institutional voice, the opinion carries an authority found few other places. That view may or may not be accurate; it may or may not be deserved. But it's still there.

That is a legacy to embrace, not abandon.

Thomas Kunkel is dean of the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland. A former newspaper editor, he has written many waffling-unsigned--editorials. Email: tkunkel@jmail.umd.edu