The Editorial’s World Saving Potential

by: Nate Trinidad Doherty

Who should get the chance to share their opinion? News outlets deal with this question on a day in and day out basis, and for good reason. The opinions we are exposed to the most also have the greatest potential to influence our thoughts and actions.

Historically, the editorial piece has been an effective way to mix opinion with news to create a lively journalistic piece. However, not just any opinion can be molded into an opinion piece. Bob Wyss, in his second edition of Covering the Environment, states that “news organizations produce editorials when they become convinced of what is the right approach” (2019,171). Journalists are always asking what the ‘accurate opinion’ is in relation to a news story. 

Environmental activists of recent decades have taken advantage of this powerful news article format, and seeing as how the topic of climate change has been a highly-opinionated topic, their doing so makes perfect sense. 

Wyss insists that John Oakes is an example of someone who has had a great deal of success in producing environmental editorial pieces for the New York Times. In 1980, his column became one of the New York Times’s most popular thanks to its lively and interesting writing style, which he insists (2019, 168). The key to success for any opinion piece is to make it interesting, otherwise nobody would want to read somebody’s boring opinion. 

Today, the Editorial Board of the New York Times is clearly sticking to Oakes’s formula for their environmental pieces. The Dec. 2018 piece, Trump Imperils the Planet uses lively dialogue and multimedia (such as imagery seen in figure 1, and links throughout the article) to keep readers tuned into the piece. The Article describes trumps presidency as “one of the most discouraging years in recent memory for anyone who cares about the health of the planet” (2018). Strongly opinionated language such as this entices readers to continue reading to see if such an opinion is justified.

In today’s evolving mediascape, it is more important than ever before to choose extremely carefully which opinions get to be shared with the public. It has never been easier to spread disinformation to the masses, making accurate opinions even more valuable. Furthermore, an opinion cannot be more accurate than those conveying the dangers of climate change. Therefore, environmentalists should never sever their bond with the op-ed/editorial piece, because their opinions could prove to save us all from calamity. 

Sources:

Wyss, B. 2019. Covering the Environment: How Journalists Work the Green Beat. 2^nd edition. Routledge, New York, NY, USA.

The Editorial Board. 2018. Trump Imperils the Planet. <https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/26/opinion/editorials/climate-change-environment-trump.html> Accessed October 27, 2019.