Calisthenics about to commence? Editorial passion, and a new face at the Tribune.

A careful reading of the local newspapers is a long Sunday morning tradition in the NA Confidential household, with abundant supplies of thick black coffee available to hone analytical skills, a bagel topped with kippers or a generous dollop of cream cheese, and audio provided by the best of the big band era.

And, today, a wonderful table-setting op-ed article in the Courier-Journal.

The editor's passionate pen; Gartner's new book lauds the best editorials, by Warren Buckler (special to the Courier-Journal … short shelf life for C-J links).

The newspaper editorials Michael Gartner has collected and discusses in this engrossing new book buttress his case that today's opinion pages would be a lot more compelling if enriched with "passion," "outrage" and literary flair.

When he turns to the editorial columns of a newspaper, including, presumably, the one he edited and published in Ames, Iowa, he wants to find points of view, even those he dislikes, backed by facts, given context, and gracefully or forcefully or artfully or bluntly or colorfully expressed, or all of these. Preferably, the writer should have been around long enough to understand, feel affection and want the best for the town in which she works and in turn to be well-known to his readers.

Duly inspired to conduct a search for Gartner’s “passion” and “outrage,” we turned to the Sunday Tribune, where, somewhat disappointingly, today’s editorial slot is occupied by “guest columnist” Lee Hamilton, who writes of public diplomacy, America and the world.

Running alongside the former congressman’s thoughts, Tribune managing editor Chris Morris does a workmanlike job with a topic more common than the televised fast food advertisements that contribute to the problem he seeks to explicate, namely, that “kids don’t play like they used to, and ‘bad’ food is too accessible to them in this high-paced society we live in today.”

A cynic (moi?) might suggest that a cerebral condition paralleling that of insufficient physical exercise, i.e., a dangerous intellectual atrophy borne of a failure to exercise the muscles of the mind, has afflicted the Tribune’s own editorial pages for quite some time, perhaps even before the discredited Eddie LaDuke made an art form out of nostalgic remembrances of his boyhood shotgun house, 10-ft snowdrifts and ill-suited sporting metaphors.

The players come and go, but the institutional attitude remains. It isn’t that everyone involved doesn’t mean well or fails to do the best they can, but that the end results so often are uninspiring and utterly lacking in the integral components discussed in Gartner’s excellent op-ed contribution.

There have been exceptions, sometimes very good ones … but where’s the beef? The fire in the editorialist’s belly? The determination to change the world?

However, the cavalry has arrived ... or so we’ve been told.

Readers will recall that recently NA Confidential listened intently as John Tucker, publisher of the Tribune, spoke of reforms on the horizon.

Tribune publisher outlines bold reform plan at symposium.

Today on the front page, we learn that “Steve Kozarovich (has been) named executive editor of Tribune, Evening News.”

An editor with a history of success at revitalizing community newspapers is stepping in as the newsroom leader of the Tribune and the Jeffersonville Evening News.

Publisher Tucker’s effusive praise for editor Kozarovich’s skills was a recurring feature of the aforementioned symposium. Now he's here and on the job.

The viewpoint from New Albany’s current window of opportunity stands to be expanded and enriched immeasurably by a community newspaper running at peak performance, not because it need be avowedly “progressive” or espouse one political viewpoint over another, but because elevating the debate and doing justice to a community-wide discourse – “inspiring,” in the words of Gartner – are by definition “progressive” qualities.