R&R (Response and Reaction)

"You suck"

"What the hell are you on about?"

"I can't believe you wrote that"

Any combination of the above

All sorts of rejection, refutation and criticism await you in this industry. Sounds like fun eh? The challenge of opinion writers is to rise above these entities. Be relentless. Move on to other publishers. Be prepared to handle criticism from your editors and from your readership. It is only really a challenge to those who aren't prepared for their ideas to be so mercilessly cut down from editing and when responded to in the on-line domain. Whilst you are still writing your own opinion, your stream of consciousness must also learn to construct thought with respect to a basic understanding of what can and cannot be published. This knowledge may even prohibit you from publishing one whole editorial. Or even a whole set of posts. Get used to it if you want to publish for a major paper. You are representing them (to use the old high school reprimand) and you will be censored heavily if your sentiment does not meet their requirements. Miscommunication is also a challenge that you yourself can create, and is one that you definitely don't need. Clarity of argument, tone and structure. These are things that should be kept in mind if you are to produce a message that resonates in your readers. This is the ultimate goal of your piece; to produce positive and negative reactions in your reader. Negative doesn't indicate a 'stop sign' but an opportunity to craft a yet to be finalised perspective.

Alternatively, the response system as supported in most on-line opinion pages and blogs can be used to our advantage (not unscrupulously, of course). Quite often, you'll find people who will respond by providing further information, or a complimentary perspective or maybe even a job (when I say job I mean someone might offer to have your posts appear on their page, or even offer a move to a small print circulation. Remember, any response can be utilised for good means (unless its spam).

 

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Facing the Challenges, Exploiting the Opportunities

Well it is prudent firstly to look at challenges to the industry that you're gloriously envisioning yourself in. Journalism. More specifically, print and online media. And its not looking good, as of course, opinion writers will go down with the ship that is your newspaper/magazine, blog or whatever. If you know anything about the world of print media, you'll know about the heralding of the death of newspapers thanks to out little friend, the Internet and sites like www.newspaperdeathwatch.com with their apocalyptic visions and all. And while it seems that the wolf is at the door of Fairfax media, statistics are actually fighting them back. According to figures aggregated by the Audit Bureau of Circulation

"Australians are buying 3.2 million Sunday newspapers a week."   

     

 “Newspapers continue to resonate with readers and advertisers. This is a $4 billion advertising medium that is a powerful way to reach a mass audience"

Now your probably thinking that two quotes from a report on the study of newspaper circulation is not enough to ease your worries about this industry. You want to take your opinion elsewhere then? But you still want your voice to be heard. So your thinking on-line then. 

Print media's move to the on-line is a bit of win/loss situation for you opinionists. NO ONE goes looking for opinion that doesn't have "professional" stamped all over it. Anything otherwise is merely stumbled upon. When I say professional, I mean independent blogs that have been picked up by major newspapers and broadsheets like the more popular ones on the National Times blog page (The Vulture, Blunt Instrument, The Pitch). These blogs are labelled 'professional' because they are inside the news. They have the resources, the contacts and the second purest recreation of the event before the event itself. Your lonely little blog, which exists somewhere between this how to make a paper plane blog and my page here, has resources that aren't limited but have already been explored in their entirety. As you find yourself latch on to an issue that you can respond to with original thought, insight and some well placed criticism, and as it comes to fruition, it becomes old news. Your voice is one out of the millions struggling to gain a readership or followers. Opinion blogging is nothing new no matter how truly you believe your insight or perspective is original. Read the document in my other post. Published journalist, Andrew Leigh (who boasts over 100 published "ops" over almost all major Australian newspapers) will tell you that the opinion piece game is truly competitive, especially with newspapers where you have to compete with the regular columnists. Opinion piece are all about getting the right carrier. People gauge the worthiness of your piece depending on where it is published. Remember this.

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Getting In the Game: Surveying the 'Opinion-scape'

So you're excited about sharing your opinion with either the readership of a blog, small-circulated newspaper or even a mass-circulated newspaper? And now you want to know how to articulate those delicious but amateur inner workings into a professional journalistic piece? Well that will have to come later. The most important knowledge you need to be equipped with is the vehicle, the medium. In essence, you need to know where this practice stands today and where its heading. (however if your either cannot wait for this or you think you are already aware of the current state of this media practice, read this:

econrsss.anu.edu.au/~aleigh/pdf/OpEd_Tips.pdf

Quite possibly, the best "free" guide for writing/syndicating your opinion pieces, and if your a complete amateur in this journalistic field, your new best friend. It should fastrack you some quality journalistic knowledge needed to survive in the field. As you will soon learn, the opinion piece is not just some free space for some heated rant about anything.

Is this the modern day opinion piece? Hardly.

So have you heard about the structure of argumentation, disclosures, deploying certain types of humour and bylines? No? So you thought you could just write about anything did you? 

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So you’ve got an opinion?

Well so what, everybody does. 
 
 "Michael Keaton is the greatest actor to play Batman" 

 "The name “iSnack 2.0” is serious threat to Australian culture" 

                                                    

 "Climate change remains to be an invention of the media" 

   "Invasive shop assistants should get sacked" 

The entire world is sown together with masses of opinion. It forms the basis for our interactions. It represents the self everywhere because it is a tiny bit of us being passed on to people everywhere. Cool huh? Not really because your probably wondering how in the world did you find yourself on a page that’s not either an illegal music harvest, adult content or a YouTube video of elephants playing the flute.

Well let me separate the masses here. 

I’m going to blog about information that intends to help you understand yours and others opinions that little more deeply than the usual pop culture insults that pervade the Internet (once you do a bit of Googling, you'll realise that not much theory has been produced on the subject of opinion in the context of media). Who knows, it might even give you inspiration to pursue a career in opinion journalism. Because unless you didn’t know, opinion is a highly valued entity in the world of media. The modern day broadsheets in Australia are full of subjective thought and as they have made that move to the online domain, the opportunities are becoming even more abundant and rewarding. Yes, that’s right; people will pay you to speak your mind, tastefully.
 
Still interested?  

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