By: E&P Staff John Leo is ending his newspaper opinion column after 18 years. In a Sunday farewell piece, he wrote that "it's time to work on other projects, including a book."
Leo began the column for U.S. News & World Report in Sept. 1988. He signed with Universal Press Syndicate three years later.
"Now that I'm leaving, I should acknowledge that writing a column has to be one of the best jobs in the world," Leo wrote. "At a cost of only 750 words per week (with an occasional surcharge of sweating a bullet or two on deadline), you get to join what my friend and fellow columnist Richard Reeves calls 'the conversation.' He means the national dialogue, or whatever part of it you can shoulder your way into by being pertinent, witty, original, or whatever other trait induces people to read you."
He added: "As I've written elsewhere, columnists have to decide how they want to sound. Various famous ones have chosen to come across as combative, debonair, erudite, or incredibly well-connected. I've tried to sound conversational, as if I were talking to a friend about a subject that interests us both. And if something funny occurs to me, I throw that in too, just as most of us do in ordinary conversation.
"The problem is that the tone may be conversational, but we are still talking about a one-way monologue. This is one reason why columnists seem to be losing out to Internet commentators. Comment on the Net isn't just quicker and cost-free. Immediate feedback, still mostly in the 'Gotcha!' phase, allows real conversation that anyone can join, as well as a sense that all speakers are equal. The whole model of anointed commentators talking down to mostly passive readers has crumbled. If column-writing were a stock, I would sell now."
Leo, who praised Universal in the final column, said he'll be setting up a Web site at JohnLeo.com.
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