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Title of article/blog post: I despise opinion columnists but when I grow up I want to be one
[Editor's note: all author's additions in red font, and all editor's additions in blue font]
I have grown to despise opinion columnists. I devoured them in my late teens to early twenties, thinking they were the thought leaders of the world (several middle/high school teachers led me to believe this in their effort to make me and my fellow classmates more worldly). A circular logic thus formed in my mind. Opinion columnists are given prominent platforms to voice their thoughts because they are experts (their bios either explicitly or implicitly state this). Because they are experts, they are informed on the matter they are discussing, whether I agree with them or not. Because they are informed, they are experts, and thus warrant such prominent platforms. Repeat the loop. [Author's note: clean up the language] Opinion columnists are given prominent platforms to voice their thoughts, thus what they write must be good! I might not agree with them, but they are definitely informed because they are experts. If they weren’t experts, they wouldn’t be given such prominent platforms, and the circular logic goes round.
In and immediately followingAafter college, I started to notice rampant grammatical errors in the opinion columns of the big news networks (e.g. CNN, Bloomberg, MSNBC, Fox News). A friend at the time got an opinion piece published in the Huffington Post [Editor's note: I'll be italicizing as needed from here on out, dude] and sent it to everyone we knew. It was absolute, incoherent garbage (I told him it was great, but a little over my head because I had no idea how to handle this situation at the time). Like the regular opinion columnists that had obvious grammatical errors, I felt terrible. If someone had cared enough to read over my friend's article before it was published, they would have caught the glaring, obvious issues. This led me to think at the time, my issue isn't with the op-ed section in general, it is with the quality of the publications I am reading.
So, I started upping my news intake (e.g. NYT, WaPo, WSJ, NPR, HBR, etc.). This alleviated most of the problems I had noticed before, but I eventually started to notice a new one. The regular opinion columnists at these publications were experts of something, but they routinely discussed topics in which they lacked expertise.
Take NYT's columnist and Economics Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman. He is an expert in macroeconomics, specifically trade, as well as owning a lot of cats. These topics often intersect with politics and international relations (especially his expertise on cats [Author's note: find amusing cat cite if possible, otherwise delete]). Thus, I expect Dr. Krugman to touch upon these topics when he is discussing macroeconomics. I even expect him to venture into other fields of economics because why not, economists are going to economize. However, it's disheartening and frustrating when he uses his aura of expert to discuss topics where he lacks expertise. When he does this, his articles go from insightful analyses to ranting social media posts. While I realize that Dr. Krugman isn't an expert on right wing ideology, progressive ideology, Russian politics, Ukrainian politics, gun policy, or a host of other topics, many readers don't, but instead presumably assume he is one because he is discussing these topics, lending his words a gravitas they don't deserve. I do not mean to pick on Dr. Krugman. There are far worse offenders than he. I use him as an example out of convenience since because I am very familiar with his research and other writings. [Author's note: Am I being too harsh on Krugman? Should I speak in generalities instead of giving a specific example?] [Editor's note: I think you're good. Generally rule here is "would there be any chance whatsoever that the person I'm talking shit on is gonna read the blog?" No way this jabroni is finding his way to PoYB.]
This particular problem with the opinion page went into overdrive over the last few months with the October 7th attack by Hamas on Israel and Israel's ensuing siege of Gaza;, which has exacerbated the tensions in the West Bank and along the Israeli-Lebanese and Israeli-Syrian borders. Suddenly, every regular opinion columnist (and writer with the opinion editor's phone number) was an expert on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and they had takes that everyone had to hear. While some fraction of the deluge of articles were written by genuine experts on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—an extremely complex and layered one—most writers simply squeezed the conflict into their own construct of the world to further their own agendacause or used the current war as an opportunity to cheerlead their previously chosen side.
[Author's note: Not sure if this should be a comma, semicolon or separate sentence. Please advise.] [Editor's note: PoYB generally considers a semicolon to fit between two independent clauses, but the "which an expert..." here is a dependent clause, so let's go with comma. I also changed the other semicolons later in the paragraph to em-dashes. See the PoYB style guide, but note that PoYB allows for generous room for creative expression, and if any writer can make a good argument in favor of alternate punctuation, I'm all ears.]
As someone who has conducted research in Israel, published research with Israeli scholars, consulted on a transboundary water project in the West Bank, read several books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, visited Southern Jordan, and been to the Cairo Airport twice in the last six months, I could have been one of these people. Not in the NYT or WaPo, but maybe in the Philadelphia Inquirer, and definitely in the Huffington Post. I resisted this self-indulgent exercise because I am not actually an expert on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, let alone the October 7th attack by Hamas on Israel and Israel's ensuing siege of Gaza, and I realize that pretending I am is not only unethical, but also harmful to real people.
Opinion pieces are assumed to help shape public opinion around an issue [Author's note: more research is needed to determine how much this is true in general, but on certain topics, there is considerable evidence that they have [CITE]]. When someone writes an opinion piece about a topic that they are not actually an expert on, or have some unique perspective of, they can sway public opinion of a topic in one direction or another based on their personal whims, not scientific fact or a well-grounded moral analysis. Their musings also muddy the waters, diluting the power of real experts to influence public opinion. Dr. Phlip Tetlock and Dan Gardner present convincing evidence in their book Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction [italics] that expert pundits are statistically less accurate about what will and will not occur than average individuals. They keep their jobs, despite this outsized error rate, because their job (i.e. offering their expert view on a topic to the public) isn't to offer what they believe to be the truth / an informative perspective [spaces on either side of /], but to get people to read what they write. This inverse incentive steals the power of real experts–A, and there are always real experts whose thoughts should be heard and seriously considered (to some degree or another), regardless of the topic. People spend their lives dealing with a situation, studying a topic, and/or trying to fix a problem. They should be heard by the public and their thoughts seriously considered when that issue enters the public discourse.
With all of this said, different platforms have different responsibilities. Major publications such as NYT, WaPo, NPR, CNN, MSN, etc., offer opinion columnists very different platforms than a blog like PYOB [Editor's note: it's "PoYB," as in "Puke on Your Birthday," not "PYOB," as in "I've typed the acronym 'BYOB' in my life too many times and my fingers have muscle memory." All subsequent errors fixed.] because there is a vastly different expectation. Readers of the aforementioned major publications expect factual news and expert opinion, not a friend of Joey's offering their raw emotions about an album, movie, or some other personal or subjective topic. The expectation of readers [no apostrophe] of PoYB is of course the latter. I don't mean to impune PoYB by saying this, but to celebrate it for accurately informing its readers of what they should expect.
Different types of blogs, such as Experimental History, do a comparably good job at accurately setting the reader's expectation. The author of the blog, Dr. Adam Mastroianni (PhD in Psychology), clearly informs you when he is discussing information backed by scientific research (he includes citations!), and when he is merely ranting about some issue that isn't backed by anything other than his own experiences (which is fine when you make this clear!).
Simply put, my gripe is that opinion columnists in major publications (and in minor ones, including prominent blogs, e.g. Matt Yglesies, Nate Silver) often deceive readers either purposefully or inadvertently when the aura of expertise is used to legitimize someone's rambling thoughts on a subject they are not an expert in. Something that can have real and terrible effects on the world.
With all of this said, here is the much anticipated twist of this blogpost—I want to become an opinion columnist, because I am an expert in certain topics1. Not a weekly columnist, as this structure incentivizes opinion columnists to discuss topics they aren't experts in. because tThey must discuss something every week and who actually has something to discuss every week that they are actually an expert in? Instead, I want to be an opinion columnist that weighs in on topics that I am an expert in when it is appropriate. This requires a very particular set of writing skills.
Joey has graciously given me a space on PoYB2 to write and experiment with what I want to say. This column will not be weekly, or really have any regular schedule (or at least the submission of my articles to Joey won't). In a way, this column is a battle between Joey's vision for PoYB to have regularly scheduled contributions and my inability to commit to any such thing. Since I want to write more, not only opinion pieces but creatively, I hope Joey wins. However, having been me for nearly 35 years, I have well founded doubts that he will.
[Insert Title of Column Here] is a sporadic column about topics that Sean is an expert in unless otherwise made explicitly clear. Feedback is welcomed and appreciated!
Footnotes
1From Sean's professional website: "E**** is a behavioral economist that uses experimental methods to study environmental, agricultural, healthcare, education, and savings issues. His research focuses on disgust, risk, and stigma; behavioral change and persistence; water issues; and the economic effects of environmental risk and adaptation to climate change. Through his research he has found a strong interest in working on cross-cultural, multidisciplinary teams and collaborating with local, national, and international stakeholders." [Editor's note: Sounds fancy. I also blocked out your last name, so as to protect you in the court of law (asterisks are impenetrable by even the strongest lawyers)]
2PoYB has hosted a number of expert pieces on individuals discussing addiction and other mental health issues (because they were written by individuals experiencing said issues). If you are dealing with a mental health issue, you may find comfort in them, I certainly did (see [Example 1], [Example 2], [Example 3]). [Editor's note: I know you probably had actual examples in mind, but it's funnier if we just leave them blank. If you want to find out how much of a disgusting alcoholic I was and am, then hit that fucking search bar at the top of your screen.]
[Editor's note: this blog post may be edited after publishing, in accordance with author's needs and desires, which will be relayed to editor after the end of the business day, since not everyone can blog during work hours.]
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