Opinion writing 101

Cong Corrales

“Last words are for fools who haven’t said enough.” -Karl Marx (1818-1883)

IT took years of coaxing and goading from people I have come to respect and revere for me to even start considering to write opinion pieces. To put it bluntly, I find punditry hilas.

I find it even ironic that I have been pursuing a journalism career since I’ve always been more inclined to poetry and literature when I started out writing — unlike my father.

Yes, before Emilio dragged me into this s**t storm of a career, I was perfectly comfortable thinking up of quatrains and couplets for my Petrarchan or Shakespearean sonnets. I was more interested in devising twists and turns in the plot of a short story.

I blame Emilio for all of these.

Anyway, I’m here now — working for a daily newspaper with the widest circulation in northern Mindanao. But it took me grueling years in the trenches (read: beat reporter) before I started writing opinion pieces.

Five years ago, I remember one of my mentors, Carolyn Arguillas, asked me to write an opinion column for Mindanews. I replied with an anti-climactic no. I said I was too young to be writing what my thoughts are on current events.

To even think about writing something that bares my soul on any given subject out in the open still gives me goosebumps.

I felt that my body of work wasn’t enough to build my credibility as a pundit.

When I did, finally, decided to write my column, My Wit’s End, I read a butt-load of opinion pieces first. I found that punditry, although subjective in nature, must be based on real events. This is only logical because how could you arrive at a sound hypothesis if it is based on imaginary events.

Opinion and fiction or creative writing are two distinct approaches to writing, I was taught. But unlike creative writing, in column writing, your characters are already there. You do not create the characters to fit your narrative. You do not base your accusations on events that didn’t happen.

One thing I found to be true to most opinion pieces, the common denominator, if you will, is that this articles are and should be based on facts and documents.

Opinion writing, to me, is the distillation of current events that affect society, and so you offer your humble analyses of these events for your readers to come up with intelligent and informed decisions. You do not write opinion articles based on the figment of your imagination.

Column writing can also serve as a call to action. It serves as the embodiment of journalism’s role in society as a check and balance. It is the practical application of the fourth estate’s “watchdog” role.

I think this is where the concept of “conflict of interest” comes in. You have to be detached to the subject you’re writing about to be able to give an honest opinion.

Now, if you write a column to attack a public entity based on the imagined wrongs this entity did to further line your own pocket, then that my friend is not punditry. It is just nothing short of a shakedown — a con and the purveyor of this, a hack job. It is nothing but a receipt of a tigbas.

It is correct when you say that a wrongdoing can never be contained much like air or smoke. But an imagined wrongdoing cannot get off the ground either.

I am not the least threatened by this supposed age of post-truth and fake news (read: imagined events).

You see, pundits who base their opinion on a fake news or imagined sources is not really a fake pundit. It only shows the author’s gullibility and stupidity.

This kind of people will eventually self-destruct but like the fool that the economist Karl Marx described at the start of this article, they will always jockey for the position of having the last say in the matter.

Until then, we will just have to contend with these maladjusted paid hacks and take their writings the way it should be — as works of fiction, ergo, for entertainment purposes and nothing more.