Those of you who read editorials – and you know who you are – let’s have a show of hands on the following question:

How many have ever seen an editorial in a newspaper that contradicted an earlier editorial in the same newspaper?

Thanks for participating. Just as we thought: It never happens.

As you know, editorials are expressions of opinion tailored to reflect the viewpoint of the publisher and management of the newspaper. But in the end, they’re written by one human being, complete with human frailties, memory lapses and a yearning to go home by a reasonable hour at the end of the day.

What is the mechanism, you editorial fans might wonder, to keep that lowly human from ever expressing an opinion contrary to those of his or her predecessors?

A good editorial writer can crank them out for several years running before exhausting every original thought about the president, the Legislature, local government and the Red Sox. He or she might keep track of personal output, but even that can total 500 or so editorial topics a year. At the end of a five-year stint, there would be thousands of opinions to remember.

But at a newspaper that has been around as long as the Sun Journal, for instance, that number could easily be 50,000 or more.

Were we always in favor of widening the turnpike? Did we always think sprawl was such a bad thing? Can we say that our support for public funding of campaigns has been consistent throughout the ages?

Probably not.

A newspaper’s editorial position, like the meandering North Pole, must wobble from year to year.

No scientist takes an editorial core sample and examines the layers to see whether this year’s slant on the news matches the slant decades ago. That’s probably just as well. If someone kept bringing up the fact that we said the complete opposite a decade ago, it would certainly affect our indignant tone, and where would we be without that?

If an editorial writer hears from a reader or a governor who says “good job” or “you’re crazy,” the editorial writer has done the job: the job of making people think. Sure, it’s good to be consistent, but it’s better to try to create a spark.

We spend our time trying to examine the issues, the decisions, the morals and ethics and “what’s right” in a given situation.

In that, year after year, we’re perfectly consistent.

Ben Stackhouse is the regional editor for the Sun Journal. He served as editorial page editor for five years. He can be reached at [email protected].