Balance and Power: Journalist takes teachers to school on editorial writing

Editorial writing is hard to do well, and editorial writers have to be good reporters, according to Sarah Gassen, Arizona Daily Star editorial writer.

“Power comes from facts,” Gassen said. “Power comes from specifics.”

Gassen said opinion writers need to have an argument they can support and to have done the research and reporting to back up the opinion.

“There is no easier way to dismiss someone’s argument than to say ‘You have your facts wrong,’” Gassen said.

Speaking to a group of journalism teachers at the ASNE Reynolds High School Journalism Institute Wednesday, Gassen added that opinion writing can be fun.

“It really can be heady business,” she said. “It can be exciting and cool.”

Opinion writing serves a purpose. News tells what’s going on in the world—opinion tells why it matters, Gassen added.

“It’s also really entertaining,” Gassen said. “People pick up the paper to read columnists.”

Opinion writers also have to present all sides of an issue, says Gassen. They must acknowledge what the other side says and try to answer it.

“You can’t just ignore it,” she said.

I found Gassen’s presentation both instructive and entertaining. I think my staff is already doing a good job on the editorial page, but of course I would still like to see an even better job. Two of my editors advanced to regional competition in editorial writing this year.

The discussion about whether or not the writer should get a byline was amusing. I had the same problem for years: students wanted everyone to know that they wrote the scintillating editorial calling for open-campus lunch. And every year we’d get dinged in our ILPC evaluation for having bylines on our editorials. Last month, after everyone else was gone on the last night of deadline, I just deleted those bylines. The next week, when the paper came out, my editorial page editor said, “Miss, there was a mistake on my page. There are no bylines.” I explained to her that they don’t belong on editorials, expecting to get some static from her. To my surprise, she just said, “Cool. That will make my page a lot easier lay out.”

Rebecca Bennett
Bastrop High School
Bastrop, Texas