What you can learn from Ed Yong

By Julia Phillips

Some tips on researching and writing an advocacy opinion piece I found are googling information to find sources, how to make people care and why you should use a narrative start.

Googling information about the topic you are going to write gives you more background information and can lead to finding people to interview. Yong did this and was able to find organizations and people within them to talk to. He wanted to talk to women to create a demographically diverse piece.

Yong really wanted to make people care about the whales. He wanted people to not see the whales dying as just a number but to feel bad for all the different whales. He created this personal stories for each so the reader can see how short and tragic their life was. He also wrote it in a way where not only animal lovers will care. The piece helps people understand why others care about protecting all different types of animals.

Lastly, Yong tells us why he uses a narrative start; he said people read the Atlantic to learn what to think about the news. Yong personifies the whales so it can become relatable to everyone. Yong believes that the tone of articles is used so the reader can know what to expect. With a narrative start the reader will know that this piece is important to a lot of people and more should care about young whales dying due to boats and entanglement.

I was able to read “No One is Listening to Us” by Ed Yong. This article starts off with an anecdote about Megan Ranney, who works in the ER. Yong gives a terrifying view of COVID-19 and how it is not planning to stop after Joe Biden being elected to office. The piece continues with many different stories of people working in the ER and how much COVID-19 has been destroyed. Yong wrote this piece to show how many lives COVID-19 has affected and how it will not be going away anytime soon.

Storygram: Ed Yong’s “North Atlantic Right Whales Are Dying in Horrific Ways”. (2020, February 29). Retrieved October 7, 2021, from https://www.theopennotebook.com/2019/10/08/storygram-ed-yongs-north-atlantic-right-whales-are-dying-in-horrific-ways/

Yong, E. (2021, July 22). ‘No One Is Listening to Us’. Retrieved October 7, 2021, from https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/11/third-surge-breaking-healthcare-workers/617091/