This is something only conservatism junkies could possibly care about. But, hey, go with your heart.
I like the Weekly Standard quite a lot. I’m a fan of many of its current and former staffers. And I read it dutifully every week. But one thing I’ve always hated about it is their signed editorials. Oh, I don’t mean the content of them. Some of their editorials are outstanding. What I can’t stand is that they’re signed — e.g. “Fred Barnes, for the Editors” etc. The Standard positioned itself as the new authoritative voice of conservatism (as all new conservative magazines must — how else to convince people to read them? Indeed, why start them at all?). But they couldn’t even rally a unified editorial voice for their own magazine, never mind conservatism broadly defined. Relatedly, it seems that anything Bill Kristol writes is automatically an “editorial” simply because he’s the editor. Did you know that the Standard has editorially come out in favor of Mozart?
I’ve heard the inside-baseball reasons for why they have signed editorials and we need not get into that here. But, what is interesting is that this week they have an editorial which is signed, simply, “The Editors.” I don’t know if this is new policy. But, I’m pretty sure this is the first time I’ve seen this (though maybe it happened once before). Regardless, I think it’s about time.