Note: Weekend op-ed/
“We find comfort among those who agree with us, growth among those who don’t.”
-Frank A. Clark, newspaperman
I don’t suppose it would surprise anyone to know that I, like every small-town newspaper columnist, would like to be nationally syndicated.
After all it’s got to be the best job in journalism, like getting paid to be the pub loudmouth. The only job better is the late Charles Kerault’s job On the Road, but my wife might have her own opinions about raising the kids in an RV. (Letting me roam around alone on assignment all year probably wouldn’t fly either. After his death it was revealed Kerault had another wife somewhere on the road.)
It’s also no secret many young journalists want to move into Opinion as fast as their little legs can carry them through the newsroom.
So for what it’s worth, here’s my notion of an ideal columnist and how to prepare to be one.
Firstly, get experience. Travel, live in different places, see some of the world. Work at jobs that aren’t journalism and live in places that aren’t Washington. There’s an awful lot of the breed in Washington who’ve never done this.
I’ve worked in Washington too. And don’t ever let anybody tell you different, it’s a small town at heart. It’s as provincial as any one-horse town in the Midwest, except they can’t even grow wheat.
Go to the Creators Syndicate website and you’ll find two columnists, one on the liberal page, one on the conservative, both just out of college. One started writing a syndicated column while still in college, the other is billed as “one of the youngest columnists in the nation.”
That is not a recommendation to my mind. Yes, both are highly intelligent and no doubt had stellar academic careers, but what the heck have then seen of life?
Yeah, those grapes are awfully sour. But the point remains.
Study on your own: history, logic, rhetoric, statistics.
History is absolutely necessary to taking a long view and cultivating a sense of perspective. It ‘s the next best thing to experience.
Logic teaches you what an argument is: a set of statements the last of which (the conclusion) you claim must follow from the others. Just as important, it teaches you what an argument isn’t: attacks on the arguer or his motives, appeals to authority or pity, unfounded generalizations, etc.
Rhetoric is the art of turning a persuasive phrase. You have to keep the readers’ attention, especially if you’re going to be telling them something they’d rather not hear, so your writing has to keep them entertained. And it lets you know what folks are up to when they say fine-sounding things that don’t make sense.
Statistics: an awful lot of arguments are made – and an awful lot of lies told – through statistics. Studying stats gives you a great appreciation for that old saw, “Figures don’t lie, but liars can figure.”
Regularly make it a point to read points of view you don’t agree with. I have a set of bookmark folders on my computer labeled: right wing, left wing, libertarian, anarchist, feminist, specific issue sites, etc. Of course I spend more time in some than others – but I regularly make a point to go to sites I ordinarily wouldn’t.
How can you argue for a position, if you don’t know what the argument against it is?
Read other columnists. This gives you a sense of what issues people care about, and keeps you from reinventing the wheel. When there’s an issue I want to write about, I see what columnists I respect are writing about it. Then I do something different.
Try to avoid “preaching to the choir,” think of your audience as people who disagree with you at least some of the time. Disagree is what free men do.
And most of all, you must have intellectual courage.
Most people have physical courage. But how many people have the courage to calmly consider ideas that sadden them, scare them, or make them profoundly uncomfortable?
How many times have you examined arguments and evidence, and come to a conclusion which you did not like and wished were not true? How often do you consider that you may be wrong? How often have you decided you simply did not know the truth and had to live with uncertainty?
That’s intellectual courage, and it’s rare.
That’s my plan. If I follow it, will it make me a famous nationally syndicated columnist?
I don’t know. I do know it’ll make me the columnist, and the man, I want to be.