The thing in front of an editorial (7,7)
I believe the answer is:
leading article
'editorial' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'the thing in front of an' is the wordplay.
'the thing in front of' becomes 'leading' (I can't justify this - if you can you should believe this answer much more).
'an' becomes 'article' ('an' is an indefinite article in English).
'leading'+'article'='LEADING ARTICLE'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for leading article that I've seen before include "Newspaper's comment" , "Editorial" , "such as The Times has" .)