I’m a pretty big opponent of the kind of editorial I’m about to write.
Granted, this isn’t the most abhorrent of the editorial styles the Pioneer often publishes in its Op-Ed section. There are three I particularly cannot stand:

1. Pebbles-on-a-beach essays. In other words, expository papers the writer might try to publish later in “Chicken Soup for the Soul”-type anthologies. I personally call these ‘Pebbles-on-a-beach essays” because they very likely could (and fairly often do) include a line like, “I picked up a mottled gray pebble from the sand and for a moment understood the universe.”

2. Blatant space-fillers. There are terribly obvious and entirely meaningless. An example might be the ever-“clever” editorial on not having an opinion about anything: “I sat down to write my editorial this week and came upon the stark realization that I had no idea what to write!” Ahhh. Creative.

3. News summaries from Page A27 of the New York Times. Apparently some columnists are confused about what it means to have an opinion. These columns are often so convoluted and opaque that even our copy-editors can’t stomach them and they frequently get published with sloppy grammar errors.

This editorial, self-aware as it is, does not fall under these categories. Rather, this is an editorial about the Pioneer, and is therefore, annoyingly, an editorial about itself.

I have read literally every issue of the Pioneer from cover to cover for the last four years. I’ve seen it go from broadside to tabloid, from black-and-white to color, from a staff of 35 to a staff of 85.

And here’s what I know for sure: The Pio doesn’t suck.

I know you’ve heard it does. It’s possible you yourself have made a compelling argument about WHY it does. Perhaps you were misquoted in an article, or maybe you noticed when a headline boasting about “Exciting spring sprouts” corresponded with a story about rugby and tennis.

Certainly, the Pioneer has had its embarrassing moments.

And yeah, we publish the “Pebbles-on-a-beach” editorials, and sometimes the printing press renders the front page entirely in shades of puce. To be fair, we have no control over the printing press, and I’ve heard some people actually ENJOY the creative nonfiction news genre.

That’s neither here nor there.

In one of the first editorials I ever wrote for the Pio, I promised to expose the down-and-dirty secrets of the campus in my tenure as editor writing, “Whitman College has a dark underbelly.”

For the most part: and there are exceptions, of course: I was wrong. Whitman College is a pretty peaceful and generally happy place. Ducks float leisurely in the always-heated lakes while Northface-clad undergraduates stress out over their Works Cited pages. Students don’t mysteriously disappear when there’s a full moon; there’s no secret meth lab beneath the science building; President Bridges hasn’t swindled millions of dollars for his kids’ trust funds (believe me: I’ve asked him).

So when we report on the excessively boring (construction projects, classroom statistics, the visiting poet, whatever), it’s actually pretty newsworthy. And the writers of the Pio are regularly accurate, thorough and thoughtful. It’s like it’s their job or something.

And the truth is, the Pio isn’t supposed to be The New York Times. It’s supposed to be not only a forum to stimulate discussion on campus, but a resource for anyone who wants to dabble in journalism. That’s why we publish everything that demonstrates hard work and some underlying purpose: even, to my chagrin, the tiresome editorials described above.

The bottom line is that dissing the Pio is like dissing John Mayer: It’s way too easy, and a small part of you recognizes that he’s actually a really talented guitar player. Do yourself a favor and start to criticize something a little more controversial.

And once you’ve formed an educated, 500-word argument, submit it to the Pio. Our deadlines are Sunday nights.