An Opinion to Consider Before You Vote "As executive editor, I have no involvement with editorials," she said. I have the good fortune to read them the same way our readers do. That statement would not surprise anyone who knows the inner workings of The Times or most other large newspapers, where there is a substantial and well-guarded wall between news coverage and editorials. But it is a tricky concept for readers to grasp, or fully accept. My experience is that many readers don't differentiate - they see the newspaper's offerings as all of a piece. And I can understand why, especially in the online newspaper, where the usual signals of location and labeling are far less obvious than in print. Given that this column is appearing on the same day as The Times's presidential endorsement, it is worth exploring this separation and the difficulties of communicating it to readers. It is also worth asking whether such endorsements still carry weight and are worthwhile. I talked with the editorial page editor, Andrew Rosenthal, about readers" perceptions about the wall between editorial and news. "It's hard for readers to understand, particularly because some newspapers don't draw the distinction as sharply as we do," he said. And he agreed that the digital age has blurred things further: "Online, everything is everywhere." There is another important difficulty: the increasing amount of opinion writing in the news sections - whether in the form of columns or analysis pieces or attitude-infused features writing. So, to be clear, here's how it works: Editorials, those unsigned opinion pieces that appear near the back of the first section of the daily paper and in the Sunday Review, are the product of The Times's 17-member editorial board. They reflect the opinions of the board, which is headed by Mr. Rosenthal, and of The Times's publisher, Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr. With something as major as an endorsement for president, the publisher "takes a very detailed interest," Mr. Rosenthal said, and the editorials come from months of studying the issues and sometimes interviewing candidates in person, and reaching consensus in discussion. By the end of this political season, The Times also will have made endorsements in the New York and Connecticut races for United States Senate, as well as in five Congressional races and for some selected State Senate seats. All of this is kept quite separate from the news articles in the rest of The Times, where journalists report, directly or indirectly, to Ms. Abramson. When I was editor of The Buffalo News, the editorial page editor reported to me, as is the case at some papers. "Jill and I do not talk about editorials," Mr. Rosenthal said. If it happens by accident, we get out of it as fast as we can. That's because, he said, "she needs to be as dispassionate as possible" about her staff's news coverage. A more overarching question is this: Why should The Times, and newspapers in general, continue to do political endorsements at all? Isn't this an antiquated practice that - in its clear expression of preference - causes even more mistrust among a public that often feels its newspaper is biased? And for that matter, do endorsements even matter? Greg Mitchell, who writes a daily media and politics blog for The Nation, thinks they do. He monitors those endorsements, as he has for many years. So does the American Presidency Project, whose full list is online. "People mock the idea that newspaper endorsements, especially for president, have any influence at all these days, but I disagree," Mr. Mitchell said. They do influence, though it's hard to prove. He also says that watching them has provided him with a time-proven indicator of how the presidential election will go; at the moment, they say "it's a close race." Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, a Washington-based research organization, thinks that, in a sense, newspaper endorsement editorials may be more important than ever - not because of whom they endorse, but because of their reasons. "The arguments within the editorials provide useful sense-making as the audience tries to sort through all that it has heard," he told me. The collaborative decision-making behind them, that is reasoned and fact-based, based on monitoring the candidates over a long period of time - that is pretty different than most commentary that we see, which is either personal or a collection of impressions. Mr. Rosenstiel added, "Information is in oversupply, but making reasoned sense of it is not." Citizens have three duties, he said: to pay their taxes, serve on juries and vote. "Voting is choosing," he said, and newspaper editorials speak directly to that obligation and privilege. Readers may complain, even rail, about editorial endorsements. They may charge their newspaper with bias because of them. But, fraught as those endorsements are with problems and misunderstanding, they continue to have value and to serve an important purpose.I invite you to follow me at Twitter.com/Sulliview and to read my blog at publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com. E-mail: public@nytimes.com.