Shifting Gears

Blogging has actually come a bit natural for me, I honestly thought that I would struggle more but it has been kind of fun! However, this one in particular is not as easy as the others for me.

The thing is, now we are going to shift our gears a bit.

Today we’re are going to talk about opinion editorials. At first, I thought they were just your common editorial in a prestigious newspaper, turns out I was wrong! This genre, according to “How to Write an Op-Ed Column” by the Harvard Kennedy School, they are highly opinionated editorials that are written about a current and relevant event going on in society. Key words in the previous sentence being “opinion” and “relevant event.” In other words, it will be an editorial which is high in evidence to back up the author’s point of view in regards to a certain event that is going on in the world at the time.

I am, however, somewhat intimidated by this genre. Not going to lie, it seems like it is very structured, cohesive and to the point, but at the same time, one is free to share their opinions and to write anything they want to. 

The thing that I found out about op/eds, is that you need to really know who your audience is… like they say, keep your eyes in the prize. We always need to keep in mind: Who is going to read my editorial? Who is going to actually care for what I’m writing about? Who is going to agree, disagree or change their opinion about what I’m writing about? Who cares about this specific issue? 

Bret Stephens does a great job outlining the key factors to op/eds in his New York Timeseditorial “Tips for Aspiring Op-Ed Writers.” He explains how op/ed writers need to write confidently and in an asserting manner so that their opinion is strong enough to persuade the audience to change their mindset about the topic. He explains how “a wise editor once observed that the easiest decision a reader can make is stop reading,” so one must make the effort to allure the reader from the very first sentence all the way to the last one. Every comma, every expression and strategy that is used in the editorial must be with the audience in mind so that they have no reason to stop reading. It must be framed in a way that every sentence seems so important that the audience is eager to read the next sentence and the next one.

One topic that I am really interested in to write for our opinion editorial is the issue of immigration in the United States. I feel like this will be a great topic to write about since, after reading your blogs, most of us can relate to it. I have been surprised at the majority of my peers being immigrants or having parents that have migrated to the States. Recently, there have been many controversies taking place in America due to our current presidential administration, o it will be very interesting to do a further research on it and share my opinion on the matter.