Community Forum

The Op-Ed page--so named because it runs opposite a newspaper's editorial page--became a journalistic tradition with the rise of the personal column. Pioneered by the Pulitzers in the old New York morning World, the Op-Ed provides a variety of viewpoints in dozens of major metropolitan dailies. Curiously enough for a newspaper that prides itself on objectivity, the New York Times has resisted the trend. Last week Publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger announced that the Times will start a daily Op-Ed page in mid-September. "Points of view in disagreement with the editorial position of the Times will be particularly welcomed," said Sulzberger.

That policy should especially please the many New Yorkers who consider the Times to be the only complete and serious daily left in the Big Town since the demise of the Herald Tribune. The Times gave readers a foretaste of its new role as a community forum last month when it printed a much remarked column on the editorial page by a frequent victim of its editorial jabs. True to its practice of identifying commentators, the paper not only gave Spiro T. Agnew a byline, but noted in deadpan italics: "Spiro T. Agnew is Vice President of the United States."

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