The Republic is trying to draw a brighter line between its News and Opinion sections by adding banners over the opinion pieces.
I'm sympathetic to this problem. After all, it's difficult to lay out a website in a way that naturally distinguishes between hard news and opinion. However, the Republic will need to take a few additional steps if they want to draw a line between the opinion and news sections. Take this Tweet from Laurie Roberts for example.
This is a classic Laurie Roberts Tweet in which she once again insults the Governor and accuses him of cowardice. This is part of her "grow a spine" "trembling hands" "baby steps" "punts" series. Laurie doesn't make actual arguments in these columns, she is simply throwing red meat to her base--the Tweet is designed to appeal to the reflexive Ducey haters.
Notice who else it appeals to? That's right, Republic reporter Craig Harris "Likes" this Tweet. Reporters claim that "retweets are not endorsements" but no one can claim that "Likes are not Likes." Harris likes this red meat Tweet and he wants the world to know that he likes it. This lack of boundaries makes it clear that Harris is a hard left partisan. Which of course undercuts his claims that his attacks on, say, Charter Schools is anything other than partisan talking points.
If you want to see how partisan his "likes" look, check out this Tweet.
Obviously Craig Harris didn't know that Rebecca Rios was going to "Like" the same Laurie Roberts column that he "Liked." And the odds are that mine is the only feed in which their Likes appeared side by side. However, the juxtaposition helps to drive home the point that Harris is not objective. He is unable to avoid partisanship on Twitter and frankly, the evidence that he provides of his hard left bias gives us more ammunition to claim that his reporting is just as partisan. Furthermore, Harris's public displays of overt partisanship also serve to bolster my point that the Republic's news and opinion sections are actually a combined partisan effort. I would argue that Harris is not the outlier; he is simply the most obvious--and undisciplined--example of a hard left news department coordinating with a hard left opinion page to present a uniformly hard left final product.
Maybe the Republic should just put the banner over every article on AZCentral.