- WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE

Editor, The Emporia (Kan.) Gazette, 1895-1944

When I was a child, and my father would tell me to do something, or to stop doing something, I would often ask, or whine, "Why?"

And he would sometimes, not very often, reply, "Because I said so."

As I got older, and replayed some of those moments in my mind, I came to understand that he was just as dissatisfied with that answer as I was.

My dad would have been a good editorial writer.

Even when he was clearly in too much of a hurry to say anything else, the tone in his voice and the look on his face betrayed that he knew that "Because I said so" is not a good reason to do anything.

It's not even a reason, really. It's just a way to end the conversation and move on when somebody who is trying to be responsible doesn't have the time or the energy to explain everything, when we're going to be late for school or the movie or it's time to eat.

When he wasn't in a hurry, which was often, he would more likely be the one asking why. As in, "Why couldn't the good Lord have made pecan pie and ice cream a health food?" Or, "Why do people (like newspaper reporters) say, 'I'm sorry to bother you,' when they obviously aren't the least bit sorry?"

I don't think he ever got good answers to those questions. But he always wanted to know, in a playfully challenging way, why any of us thought something to be true, whether it was on a matter of politics, philosophy, the eternal, or why I was always happy to eat ketchup but wouldn't touch a tomato.

Flat statements on our part that purported to be fact, when they were really matters of opinion, were immediately, though gently, tossed back at us with Socratic skill. Why would you think Nixon should be president? Why shouldn't I move to Canada if they are going to draft you to defend Quemoy and Matsu? (Huh?) Why are you always reading science fiction? Why won't you read some good Westerns? Why would you think that "Taxi Driver" is a good movie but "High Plains Drifter" is too violent?

So, if I am any good at this editorial writing dodge - and I have a few certificates and plaques that claim I am - most of the credit belongs to hearing, and trying to answer, the simple question, "Why?"

The news reporter's job is to answer the questions who, what, when, where and why. The editorial writer's job is to consider whether somebody else's why, usually someone in a position of responsibility, makes sense. If it does, we're supposed to explain why. If it doesn't, we're not only supposed to explain why it doesn't, but what would.

It cannot be because the president, or the governor, or the mayor, or the police chief, said so. It has to be because it makes sense, because it works, because it is ethically correct, or because it is the least disgusting of several disgraceful alternatives.

The reasons can be logical, historical, emotional, tragic or comic. The reasons should fit the subject, draw readers into the question and help them see it in a way they haven't seen it before, even if they think your conclusion is clearly nuts.

These days, my 5-year-old son is the one asking the questions.

"What's that?" he will demand to know.

That's a duck.

"Why?"

The boy's going to make a good editorial writer.

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George Pyle (gpyle@sltrib.com) has been a journalist for 26 years and an editorial writer for The Salt Lake Tribune since 2002.