Speaker 1: Hi folks, today we're going to talk about opinion writing. And opinion writing has a very important place in journalism, and it can be a very rewarding and interesting career for many writers. But I hope that today's video gives you a broad understanding of what all opinion writing involves, what it is, and whether or not it might be a good fit for you. So as always, give me a holler if you have any questions, send me an email, get in touch with me, I'm here for you, and I hope you enjoy the video. Okay in my last video lecture, I started out by talking about the hard, soft news spectrum. So the fact that news stories often appear on a spectrum of hard news to soft news. What I didn't talk about in that lecture, as we moved on to talk about news values, was opinion writing. And that's because opinion writing is a different kind of animal, and it's different from news writing, whether that be soft news or hard news writing. But it still holds a very important place in the field of journalism. Now when we talk about the difference between news and opinion, most mainstream news organizations have held that there needs to be a clear division between the two. And so when a news organization is running opinion content, it needs to be clearly labeled as such. It needs to be clear to the reader that the opinion content is separate from the news content, and that reporters who are reporting straight news are not writing opinion on those matters. And so this is where we want to see journalists avoiding what we call editorializing in their reporting, right? So whenever a journalist is trying to provide news to a reader or a viewer or somebody in their audience, they want to provide that information, again, in mainstream publications, they want to provide that information from an objective, unbiased perspective as much as possible. And so the reader needs to understand whenever they are reading a news story that that is intended to not carry the opinion of the reporter with it. However, whenever an opinion column or an opinion piece runs in the newspaper or in a news organization, then it's clearly labeled as opinion so that the people in the audience know, okay, I'm no longer getting straight news, now I'm receiving commentary from someone and getting their own personal perspective and opinion on any given matter or news topic. So again, most mainstream news organizations have held in the era of modern journalism that when we provide opinion content, it should be clearly labeled as such and distinguished from what we are presenting as our objective news content. So what does opinion writing offer the reader that they don't get through straight news writing? Well, first, they get a compliment to the straight news content in the news publication. Readers want to hear an opinion sometimes. They want to hear someone who is taking the news of the day and sifting through it and thinking about it and then providing a certain perspective on it, providing an argument about how they feel about that particular topic. Opinion writing also offers readers a chance to understand the news of the day in its context. And so sometimes it can be difficult when reading through a multitude of news stories that are providing the facts and laying them out there in as objective a way as possible. Sometimes it can be difficult for the reader to try to make sense of how all of these pieces fit together, how all of the dots connect. And so opinion writing allows readers to read and to hear from the perspective of someone who, again, has thought through these topics and can provide some context to them to help put them in light of various factors that we might consider when thinking about a particular news issue. Opinion writing also gives that personal perspective. Again, people are attracted to writing from a first-person perspective oftentimes, and they're attracted to writing that has some personal voice to it. And so opinion writing helps to offer that for the reader in a way that they don't get it through the straight news writing. Opinion writing can also be entertaining, right? And so sometimes it's just fun to have a nice read of someone's opinion in a piece. And it can be about something lighthearted or maybe a bit heavier in nature, but maybe they take a snarky tone or maybe they take a witty tone. But there's a certain entertainment value to it. And likewise, opinion writing can carry humor. It's appropriate in some cases to have humor in opinion writing. Whereas generally, a news writer is going to try to keep the cute and clever stuff out of his or her writing, that we won't see as much explicit humor in straight news writing. Opinion writing also provides a passion in the news publication. It provides an opportunity to stir readers up, to get them to actually care about something. And again, this goes along with the idea of putting the news in context. Why should I care? What things should I think about? But what does this really mean to me? So it offers passion to the reader as well. And opinion writing, particularly in the form of letters to the editor, provides a public voice for concerns as well. So it's not just members of the newspaper who are writing their opinion about things, but also news organizations of all forms have offered opinion sections as a platform and a way in which readers and members of the audience can contribute to the general social discussion about the events of the day as well. Okay, so opinion writing comes in a few different forms. Generally, we see opinion writing in editorials, columns, and letters, and the opinion page of a newspaper generally runs all three of these types of opinion writing. An editorial expresses the official position of the newspaper, that is, the editorial board, and then the editorial desk, which is assigned to present an official opinion or position on a particular matter. That's what is known as an editorial from the paper. Now we also have columns, which can be either syndicated or from a staff columnist. Syndicated columns are generally written by someone outside of the newsroom of the specific publication in which this column runs. So one example might be if you have a columnist for the New York Times, say David Brooks or Thomas Friedman or Paul Krugman or someone like that, you will often find their work run in local newspapers. So your hometown newspaper may have a column from one of these New York Times opinion writers. Obviously, those journalists don't work at your hometown newspaper, but their stories, their opinion articles are published in your local paper as a syndicated column. Staff columnists are exactly what we would think of. It's someone who works locally there for the news organization and is tasked with writing opinion pieces on a variety of topics. Many times you see somebody specializing in a particular area in their column, and so we have sports columnists or maybe a food columnist or a movie critic or something like that. But those are staff columnists whenever they work there at the local publication and their work is specifically intended to run just in that local publication. Now again, it's important to understand the distinction then between opinion writing and straight news writing. Sometimes you will hear people say, oh, well, journalism is supposed to be objective. Well, it depends on what kind of journalism we're talking about. Again, certainly most mainstream news organizations that try to write the stories down the middle and then let the reader decide where they stand on a particular issue, certainly those news articles do need to be objective or the approach to presenting that information needs to be objective. But an informed democracy requires both news and opinion. Again, opinion helps us to make sense of the news that we're presented with every day. And so people need the straight facts to decide for themselves, but they also need to be exposed to carefully thought out, informed, evidence-based arguments to help them make sense of those facts. And it's important to recognize here that everyone has an opinion, but obviously not every opinion gets run in a news publication because, again, conversations and opinions that contribute to the overall dialogue about current events are those that are informed and have some sort of thought out perspective behind them and not just someone spouting off about what they personally feel on any given subject. Along those lines then, opinion writing, again, has to be more than just mere opinion. It has to have a news element to it. It has to have something universal. It has to have something that's going to connect with readers. Again, it's not just spouting off about some particular topic that you find interesting or some obscure issue that readers aren't really going to pay much attention to. There has to be something universal there, something that contributes to a collective discussion. And opinion writers then spend a lot of their time understanding that subject, again, because we want informed opinions. We want someone who can help us make sense of this news and not just regurgitate whatever the rhetoric might be out there. And so opinion writers, while their job is certainly different, they have to be abreast of the news. They have to be up and aware on the current events of the day so that they can provide solid arguments with specific examples about the issues that they are opining on, the issues that they are giving their opinions about. And so if an opinion writer is going to stick around for very long, again, their work has to be grounded in more than just the way they feel about something. Yes, they're there to provide a passionate perspective about the way they see one side or another of a particular issue, but it has to be grounded in solid, factual understanding of the issues. So it really comes down to having a balance of both of those things, of really providing a passionate argument about something, but also to back it up with solid facts and a strong understanding of the issues. That's what Richard Aragud, Pulitzer Prize winner from the Philadelphia Daily News said. He said, the secret to good editorial writing is passion. You have to really care. If you don't care about the subject matter, nobody else is going to care either. And so the whole purpose of opinion writing, to inspire or to help better understand or make sense of these issues, or to really have an understanding of what it means for you or why you should care, the writer has to care and provide a passionate perspective. And then again, back up that passion with evidence and a structured argument, well thought out perspectives. So to keep the readers interested and entertained in your opinion piece, Aragud says, say what you have to say and say it as briefly as possible. So the principles of being concise and being direct are no less important in opinion writing than they are in news writing. A strong argument is one that makes its point succinctly and concisely and then moves on just as we would in a straight news piece. The late Roger Ebert, a movie critic who had a show with his professional partner Gene Siskel for many years and was a columnist at the Chicago Tribune, said that opinion writing is first person, either implicitly or explicitly it is first person. So opinion writing should never try to remove the first person perspective from the writing. You may or may not choose to use the words I, me, we, but whether it's explicit or implicit, opinion writing is always in the first person. That's by nature what it is, it's your opinion if you're the writer. Ebert says you have to be honest with your audience. If you laughed, say you laughed, he said. If you cried, say you cried. If you were bored, say how bored you were, but you were there, the review should communicate what you thought. Again, the audience is coming to your piece, to your writing or to your video or whatever it is, to hear that personal tone, to hear the argument and so be honest with your reader and that's what they're asking for is your honest opinion on a matter. And so, again, Gene Siskel, Roger Ebert's professional partner for many years, his sparring partner, they would disagree vehemently sometimes about their opinions on movies, but he said likewise that opinion requires that you write and say what you honestly feel. And that in that process, it's not a good occupation for people who want to be liked or want to follow the crowd. When you have to honestly present your opinion in a public forum, you have to expect that there are going to be people who disagree with you and who are not very fond of your opinions or the way that you present them. And so opinion writers frequently receive feedback that is not necessarily always the most constructive to their egos. And so opinion writers have to certainly develop a thick skin and realize that they're there again to honestly present their opinion and if they can't do that for fear of offending someone or having people not like them or because they don't really like to go against the grain, then opinion writing is probably not the writing field for them. And lastly, Dave Barry, who is a humorist, he was a long time columnist at the Miami Herald, he simply said, don't be boring. Again, opinion writing is there to provide a compliment, provide something different in the news publication from what readers are getting in the straight news or even in the feature writing. And so make it come alive, make the writing mean something and touch people in a personal way and connect with them and be compelling. Have the writing be interesting and as he put it succinctly, don't be boring. That's it on opinion writing. Opinion writing I hope you guys recognize is a very valuable addition to the journalistic mix that news organizations provide and it's very attractive particularly for young writers and it's a very good fit for some people. But I hope this sort of helps to paint a broader picture of what opinion writing really involves and that way if you are interested in going into journalism, maybe this will help you have a better idea if you want to do more opinion pieces or perhaps stick to more straight reporting or perhaps doing rich human interest features or something like that. As always, get in touch with me if you have questions and we'll see you next time.