Writing Opinion For Impact

What I have gathered from this  book so far is that writing editorials and columns are actually not so much different, in some cases, than writing journalistic pieces.

There is still the aspect of having a responsibility to the readers and to deliver them the sound and true facts that are used to back up one's own strong opinion on something. It also has to be somehow relative and timely, and the ultimate goal (just as for journalistic pieces) is to invoke some kind of thought and action within the reader. There is also the underlying responsibility to the publication and ultimately the advertisers which is sad, yet unavoidable fact of all news and media.

Some of the differences seem to be the researching and reporting process in general, and who is held accountable and responsible for the information within. In a hard news story the facts are revealed by the sources who are regarded as experts on a matter and are expected to be revealing the facts accurately (as long as they have been quoted accurately.) While in an opinion piece, the person writing the information is the one who has researched and become an expert themselves and should be held accountable for what they have chosen to write. But it seems in some cases with editorials, the person does not have to sign their name to their work, leaving the publication itself at risk of being scrutinized for something that may be proven to be false within the piece.

Ultimately I feel like writing editorials are probably much more tedious than columns because at least as a columnist the person has chosen something of a niche to write about. But than again, those chosen to write editorials are probably people who have strong opinions anyways so they may not have so much of a problem expressing them.

Also I think it may be fun to write in this style because really it is your own style rather than having to follow the inverted pyramid structure of hard news. It seems like there is a little more room to let loose and enjoy.

And this is when I realized that the free preview I was taking advantage of on google books was cutting out large sections, so the rest of my take on this topic will have to come when I receive the book in the mail. :)