Writing Op-Eds for Print or the Web
Copyright by Hank Nuwer
This is an excerpt from my upcoming (2007) "Solving Writing Problems A through Z for Print and the Web."
Purchase a copy from the book company


Never forget the “Op” in Op-ed stands for Opinion. If you’re lukewarm and wishy-washy on a topic, get off the fence and do some factchecking.

Here are Hank Nuwer’s tips:

1) Facts are even more important than your opinion.  All opinions expressed in the piece are yours, not those of the publisher of the magazine or newspaper you are writing for.  As Fess Parker used to say in the old Disney Davy Crockett movies: Be sure you’re right, then go ahead.

2) It’s a tossup whether your lead starts with a strongly worded opinion or the facts in standard “who, what, where” format. Just get both in the first two or three graphs and your piece is likely on target. Don't go on and on forever to point out the facts. I regularly use "bullet points" to make a sort-of list of facts and, later, solutions.

3) If you have a strong idea for an op-ed, write a brief letter of inquiry to the editor of your chosen publication (or phone if you have a relationship with an editor there). The letter should clearly outline your plan of attack and needs to be as sharply worded as your op-ed itself will then be. If you dally, someone else will write the piece that should have been yours. Include the hour and day you expect to email this piece by attachment.

4) Count on your piece getting factchecked. Include your day and evening phone numbers.

5) Keep it terse. My op-eds typically run 600 – 750 words. Let the editor know the expected word count for yours. (My longest was about 1,000 words.)

6) What do you know?  If you have a personal connection to the news story that connects to this Op-Ed, state that in both the letter of inquiry and the Op-Ed.  Are you somewhat an expert on this topic by virtue of your profession, education, or training? Even better. Include that bio at the end of your published piece. (If you are an educator or corporate higher-up, you may want your media office to pitch the Op-Ed for you to their contact(s) at the local paper.)

7) Have a backup publication in case your piece gets turned down. If the editor does not respond to a second email, pop that inquiry off to some other lucky editor. Be sure to keep your intended audience when you write. An opinion piece for a liberal publication such as The Nation sounds nothing like one for the more conservative New Republic.

8) Narrow your focus when you write the Op-Ed. Not only does that help you keep the piece within word limits, but it helps you frame the column so that you don’t color outside the lines with that wonderful purple prose of yours.

9) Op-eds are service pieces in disguise. If you point out something wrong or criticize an institution or social wrong, offer a solution.

10) If you quote something that someone else has said or written, add a note to the editor with the complete citation, as well as including brief attribution within the text of the piece.

11) Think of your lead as a piece of dangling ribbon. When you get to the end, and you’ve made your argument in the context of all the facts, tie that sucker in a beautiful bow to end your piece.

12) So how should you format your op-ed?  Here's one that I recently published in the Toronto Globe & Mail.



Rights vs. Rites on Hazing

 By HANK NUWER (Henry J. Nuwer)
Tuesday, October 4, 2005  Toronto Globe and Mail

If recent allegations prove true, sexual hazing has been a barbaric ritual of choice for McGill University's football team. However, despite increasing media attention since the early 1980s, few educational institutions have faced the sordid reality that males sometimes assault or sodomize other males while hazing.

The dark truth is that some athletes, even some coaches, feel they have the right to certain excesses. Hazing is one of those excesses.

Most hazing is non-criminal. Indeed, many sports programs have positive initiations or no initiations at all -- or, albeit foolishly, confine hazing to rookies wearing silly clothing or doing acts of servitude. However, about 20 per cent of all athletes endure acts that fall into the category of severe, even criminal, physical or mental abuse, according to a 1999 U.S survey.

These incidents are disturbing. Recent sexual-hazing cases involving U.S. athletes have seen rookies sodomized with pinecones, fingers, pencils and broom handles -- even to the point of rectal tearing. Female sexual hazing and simulations are rarer but do occur. Fraternity and sorority hazing has seen at least one death every year in the past 35 years.

Some educators put on hazing-prevention forums for athletes, fraternities and general student populations across North America. Fraternities, suffering way more deaths than do sororities and athletic teams, have educated new members for years, although sometimes all the efforts go to waste when undergraduates and alumni haze behind house doors.

Silent until recently, the collegiate athletic powers that have been mobilized to stave off the alcohol-fuelled parties, partial nudity and assaults linked to hazing. In September, the U.S. National Collegiate Athletic Association finally addressed hazing in its national newsletter. Last June, the U.S. National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics attacked hazing in its general session.

Yet while anti-hazing activists and campus watchdogs urge coaches to keep an eye out for hazing in locker rooms, team buses and training camps, many coaches say policing is impossible.

When a McGill athletics director told The Globe and Mail, "You can't follow them around with handcuffs, watching what they're doing every minute," his view generally reflects, rightly or probably wrongly, what is said in coaching offices.

History shows us that only widespread student disgust at hazing, when student leaders with perceived status suddenly find hazing uncool, can make any real difference. Before 1930, deaths of U.S. collegiate freshmen and sophomores during college orientation initiations were more common than initiations deaths in fraternities. But when high-status students in the 1920s protested against hazing, the intensity greatly diminished and only one death has occurred outside a fraternity since.

Can there ever be an end to hazing, which was once a shameful Canadian staple in junior hockey and collegiate orientation? Having written about hazing since the mid-1970s, I see the following as essential to curtail hazing:

Annual surveys by colleges to assess the scope and range of hazing by high-risk groups on campus.

Zero tolerance, expulsions and charges for criminal hazing involving nudity, alcohol or sexual abuse.

 Educational programs teaching bystanders on campus how to confront and intervene when a dangerous hazing is in progress.

A means for students and faculty to report hazing anonymously.

Banishment of alumni, including former athletes, who encourage players to maintain hazing.

A change in attitude to see those who report hazing as heroes, not primarily victims.

 Public condemnation of faculty members who have abdicated their responsibility to oversee the social activities of undergraduates.

The firing of athletic directors, coaches, campus police, faculty and college presidents proved to have known about criminal hazing without taking steps to punish it.

McGill's won't be the last blue-chip program to have a hazing scandal.

A respect for human rights must replace human rites.

Hank Nuwer, a professor of journalism at Franklin College in Indiana, is the author of four books on hazing and a contributor to Making the Team: Inside the World of Sport Initiations and Hazing by Jay Johnson and Margery Holman.

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