Beth Reinhard is the least opinionated of the four, which is good because she is the paper's political editor and writes regular political stories. ''I see my column as more news analysis than opinion,'' she wrote. ``I think the column serves readers by offering them an edgier take on the news, with some attitude and humor.''

Andres Oppenheimer, I must tell you, has been a longtime friend of mine. I don't always agree with him, but his body of work on Latin America is one of the best by any analyst ever.

''What we see in our current newspapers is pretty outdated,'' he said, 'because what we see in our front pages today is the news that we have already seen on the Internet or CNN last night. Therefore, the newspapers of the future will have more of what we call `news columns' in today's news pages, and more 'opinion columns' in expanded opinion pages.''

He has settled on a formula of interviewing one or two people in a straightforward news fashion, then ending this signature way:

``My Opinion: The test for whether a column belongs to the news or opinion pages should be whether it contains original reporting, interviews, etc., and whether these are clearly identified as such. If it's just a writer's opinion, it belongs to the opinion pages. Either way, we need more columns, not fewer, to help people make some sense of the proliferation of misinformation that is flooding the Internet.''

And My Opinion? Each one of them is excellent, but the editing needs to be better to prevent transgressions. The editing should insist on reporting and some balance if the column is opining on policy or politics. Bias should be stated up front when relevant. And there should be a much broader range of columns. Otherwise, move them all to the op-ed pages.

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