Okay. Hi, welcome back. So, those three articles, as I hope you saw, were all written in a personal voice. you they had something important to say about different issues. The one that you're seeing on your screen now is by a Duke professor who's an expert on gun control issues. And she had some really important things to say about gun control. She wrote this in the wake of the terrible shootings in Connecticut. you had a piece about what it's like to be a student and to be pregnant and how institutions should deal with that. And she talked about her, her own experience, which was incredibly engaging. It made it much more real. You could hear her voice, and you felt empathy. You were feeling it not only here, but you were feeling it here as well. and then the last one was by the Colonel who's a, now a student at the Duke Nursing School. Who was talking about tobacco in the military and about questioning why people who work in the military should be able to buy tobacco with a, at a reduced price. And he was questioning that from a public health standpoint. A powerful argument that again one may form, more powerful, by him talking in a very personal way about patients that he had treated. And that just pulls you in. You know lets just take a minute, I've, I've, I have Christian's article here on the screen in front of you. And I'm hoping you've already looked at it. But just to remind you, whenever an American suffers a mass public shooting seven times in 2012 alone. I think about my dad, and our months of wrenching conversations after the Columbine High School massacre more than a decade ago. A Colorado farm boy who grew up with guns and displayed the family rifle in his study. Dad agreed with the National Rifle Association, that an armed population was a bulwark against tyranny. Which goes on to talk about her dad and about herself, but then she turns the corner and talks about the issue more generally. Now mind you, this is coming from a Duke University professor who is one of the countries leading experts on gun control. But she doesn't go up there on Mount Olympus and just sort of throw out these under bolts of wisdom. Instead she's trying to talk to you as one human being to another, which is a really powerful combination. And it's something here at Duke, and in previous places where I've worked, that I am always urging our authors to do. Which is, which is to get out of that third person, I am, I'm an expert voice. Sometimes that's appropriate, but as much as possible, the reader, again, just sitting there all frazzled at the breakfast table, or wherever they are. They're trying to make a connection with you not only here, like here. And it to the extent that you can be vulnerable and reveal yourself. And share your emotion as well as your intellect. that's a really powerful combination, not only with the readers but with the editors who are going to decide whether to accept your article. So now let's get into some tips about what you should be doing. And the first one which we have in super large letters is, Make Your Reader Care. It's what I was just saying. What's the one thing that you want them to do or to believe or to remember when they finish your story? Now un, unlike some of the things that Denise and the others have been talking to you about where it might be a somewhat longer form. Or more expository, you've going to, as you're going to hear, you can have 700, 750 words. This much, is not very much. And you've got like two minutes, three minutes, you are not going to solve all the problems of the world in 700 words. You want to make one point and make it really well. And you're not just trying to help people understand the issue. It's an opinion article, you are supposed to have an opinion about how you feel about it, and what you want them to do about it. And just saying well this is something that needs more study, that's usually not good enough. Do you want them to personally get involved in your community or to get politically involved or to do something at their local hospital? Whatever it is, you need to be clear in your mind what it is you're asking the reader to do. Point number two, tie your issue to something in the news. I've said this several times before, and I'm going to say it again. You want to tie in, tie your opinion, as much as you can. It doesn't always work, but try to tie it to something in the news. So, what's, what is it that's happening in the world or in your community today, maybe it's an international crisis. Maybe it's an ongoing economic crisis. Maybe it's just something in your community right now, on the day I'm recording this. As we've seen we are having debates about, about guns, about immigration about taxes, it's like whatever. And then you can talk as we saw, we saw people talk about the Superbowl. About the Oscars, you can talk about the weather, anything, but as much as you can, try to tie what youo're doing to something in the news. Okay let's go through some of the mechanics of this. An Op-ed article is about 750 words, it's not 770, it's not 800. it's certainly not 9 or 10, you know, 900 or a 1,000, sometimes people say, I'll write a longer, and they can, they can Edit it down, no they won't. If you don't write it short, they're going to take it, and they're going to throw it in the garbage. The New York Times, gets hundreds of submissions every day. And other major papers get fewer than that but it's still a lot. You don't want to give them any reason to say no to you. It needs to be nice and tight and about 700, 750 words. Let's talk a little bit about how it works in terms of the mechanics of this market. There is a small group of newspapers that require Op-ed articles exclusively. They are, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The LA Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and recently The Chicago Tribune. those are about the only ones, at least here in the United States, that require articles exclusively. other newspaper will take articles on a regional basis. So if you live in Chicago, you could submit an article to the Chicago Tribune, but not the Chicago Sun Times. And likewise, if you live in the Bay Area, you could submit an article to the San Francisco Chronicle. But not to the Oakland Tribune or the San Jose Mercury or other papers. And that'll be true elsewhere in other parts of the world as well. The main thing is you have to be, it's really to be ethical, you need to be upfront with the editor that you're dealing with. You can do multiple submissions in those papers that do not require a national exclusivity. But if you're sending an article say to the Washington Post, you have to give to them exclusively and you can't like shop it at three or four exclusive places. And hope that one of them will bite. That's not, that's not the way this works. So, as you can see there's a bit of game theory that goes on here. If you send it to the New York Times where your chances are pretty slim. and especially if it's tied to the news, the clocks ticking. So while you're waiting for them, probably to say no, but not necessarily, you're missing out on your chance to, to send it to another paper. Where maybe your, your odds would be a little better, or even to send it to multiple papers. if you could tie anything locally, as you saw the North Carolina paper had lots of North Carolina oriented things, and the L.A Times and so forth. So if you're in St Louis and you're watching this recording. And you have something that could, you know, all things being equal send it to the St Louis Post Dispatch. And be sure to say in your byline that, you know, you're Joe Smith who is a pharmacist here in St Louis, or who went to college in St Louis. Or what's drove through St Louis. Anything you can do to try to tie yourself to the local market is really helpful. There are papers, papers know that they're battling with cable and now with online publications and they're really trying to establish their local identities. That's their strength, so you want to play to that as you can. So that's how it works in terms of exclusivity. Okay, now we're going to, start applying everything we've just talked about for you to start writing an Op-ed article. as Denise have talked about in some previous lessons she's asked you to think about some area of expertise that you have. And how that might be applied for an op-ed article. So maybe you could just pause for a minute, even turn off the recording for a moment. Think about what that is and think about how you would make that argument. We'll be right back. Okay, do you have a good topic to talk about? Let's think about how you might actually structure that to work in the op-ed format. Here's a few guidelines. I'll say, yet again, you need to track the news and jump at opportunities. So, if you're going to be talking about gun control or sports, or some health issue, whatever it is. If you can tie it to something that just happened in the news, that's a great thing to do. Because, I said before, you want to make a single point and make it really well and powerfully. Tell readers why they should care. Am I right for here as well as for here. Especially in the second half of the article you want to offer specific recommendations. I think you should do X, Y, Z, or I want congress to do A, B, C and try to be as specific as you can. Make your point immediately, you don't have time for, as we say in baseball the big wind up. You got to boom, get to the point and get to the point fast. And as I've said before, don't be afraid to use your personal voice to reveal yourself to the reader, and try to have some fun. the more serious, and ponderous you are, the less likely your piece is going to live to, to be printed. to reveal yourself, talk to the reader as one, one person to another. Couple of other tips that I want to share with you. One is, there's sometimes a tendency with, with, op-ed articles to choo, to sound like a know-it-all. To say, my argument is right because of this, and because of this, and because of this, and implicitly, and these people are a bunch of idiots. That's fine as far as it goes, but actually, it's much more powerful to acknowledge the other side. It makes you look humble, it makes you look human, and frankly, it's a lot more persuasive. So as we say in the trade, this is the to be sure paragraph. To be, to be sure, the other son makes some good points about taxation. Or, to be sure there's some great reasons why you might want to have a gun. Or, or on the other side, depending what your point of view is. But, but, show, show some humility and acknowledge the other side, if that, if that makes sense in the context of what you're doing. Tied to that is what I call the tedious rebuttal. if you write an op-ed article that is explicitly in response to a previous opinion article or something that was on the news side of the newspaper. They're not going to run it probably. even if it was in that same paper, that's very unusual. if you're responding to someone else, either to their article or to something that happened. Acknowledge it, say it in one sentence at most, in two and then just get on and make your argument. Don't go on sentence after paragraph after paragraph. Essentially saying, this guy is an ignorant jerk. Just, it, it, you will not look good, and it will not look persuasive, and just talk about what happened, get it out of the way, but then go on and make your article. And finally, here's one of the most important secrets about bets and something people often don't pay attention to. And I'm going to tell you the secret, which is, I've talked a lot about the importance of the opening. And if you know anything about journalism, the powerful leads, introductions are really important in all force of journalism. What's especially important in op-ed articles is also the ending. It's the ending, and here's why. So let's go back to that Wall Street Journal that I showing you at the beginning of this, right? And here we are, right? And I don't know about you, but when I'm reading an op-ed page, I just kind of you know, I kind of skim, I kind of skim the articles and I look at the headlines. And I usually actually read like the first paragraph or two of the article. And then, I read the last paragraph and the byline, telling me about the person. A lot of people do that, and the editors know that a lot of people do that. And, and then, I'll then, you know, if I find the introduction interesting, and I find the conclusion, like, where are you going with this? Tell me right way, don't save it. Then I'll go back and I'll read the whole article. So what that means then is you need to pay as much attention to the ending as to the beginning. Because the ending is actually part of your sales tool to get the editor to run the article. So let's look at that piece that we looked at at the beginning about the guy talking about monthly job reports. This is someone who was on the Council of Economic Advisers during the George Bush administration. So as a reminder, he started out saying April 5th, that's the day I'm recording this, brings us another jobs day the first Friday in each month. And then he goes on and basically his argument is that the monthly job figures leave something to be desire. And so, we should, we should not put too much though in them. But here's his ending. Employment numbers have values, especially when considered over long periods like a full year. Jobs day chatter is irresistible, but almost without content. Monthly job numbers provide imperfect portraits of the recent past. And they are very poor predictors of the labor market's future. He does tow things that I really like regardless of the merits of the argument. One is that he circles back in the very first sentence he uses the phrase jobs day and then he uses that same phrase again now in the last paragraph. That's what I call circling back, and it is a tool that all kinds of prominent calmest ranging from. George will, on the right to some of the the people from the New York Times you saw on the left, they do it all the time. The next time you look at an opinion page, you look, you'll see them doing it. Where the first sentence circles back to the last sentence. and the other thing is, he just really basically reprises his entire argument in a snappy sentence or two at the end. Let's look at the this piece here about whether you should try to marry some, find a guy to marry while you're at Princeton or some other university. Her lessons, three word, paragraph with three words and she says, Mom was right, and so forth. So think a lot about your ending as well as your beginning. We're now going to take another break, and here's what I want you to do. and this follows up what Denise was talking about, which is to begin to actually write an op-ed article. And at least for the purposes of my exercise, I want you to just really concentrate on the first few paragraph. And then on the ending, and then think about what you would have in the middle. and this will tie in to the larger unit about how you should be doing, doing this as an assignment. I'm going to, and I'll stop here and take a break. Okay, so I'm hoping you've written an op-ed article or at least a good piece of one. And lets think about what you just did. Lets go over some of the guidelines again. So did your article make a single point well? did you explain to your readers why they should care, why this matters to them? Why they should spend the next two minutes of their lives reading what you have to say? Did you appeal to them intellectually and emotionally? Trying to again, to, to reel them in not only with the power of your argument but with, with an emotional connection about why this matters to them? Did you get to your point quickly? Are you going to get that person racing out of the breakfast table? Did you find a way to put the hook into them quickly? And did you end strongly with the piece? after this recording, later on, if you have more, if you're really hungry to learn more about op-ed articles. This is the shameless plug part of the presentation. if you go to the Duke University website and you just search on op-ed. You'll see guidelines that we have that are more extensive than actually have been used by a lot of other universities as well. And you'll see a much longer description of guidelines about how to write op-ed articles. while you're on the Duke site, I also encourage you to take a look at our Duke Today opinion page. Where you'll see the most recent op-ed articles that have been written by our faculty and our students. As well as others connected to Duke in one way or another, and it's a great way to see how people in real time are writing op-ed articles. That's the end of my presentation. I hope you have found it interesting. Most important, I want to go back and say something, where, where we started. Which is this a particular craft. Writing op-eds it's not like doing the Sistine Chapel. But it's particular set of tricks that you're going to juxtapose with all of the great advice that you've been getting previously in this course. About how to express yourself clearly and how to make an argument clearly and persuasively. You're doing it in this case for a very particular kind of medium, and there's a craft to it, but you can do it. This is something that you, that I, I've seen many times in my career with, in some cases, with fairly famous politicians and professors, or what not. But also with lots of ordinary people. and it's incredibly satisfying to write and publish a piece with your name on it. Lot's of people will see it. You might even change some minds and change some policies. So I wish you good luck with it and I encourage you and now go out and write a great op-ed article and I'm looking forward to seeing it published. Thank you.
