Tips, expectations for aspiring columnists and contributors

Commuters read copies of the Daily Nation in Nyeri Town on August 14, 2017. For readers to be interested in a story, it must be well-written. PHOTO | JOSEPH KANYI | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • Readers will also look to authors who have standing, either because they have expertise in their field or unique experience of a subject.
  • If you can offer neither on a given topic you should not write about it, however passionate your views may be.

Bret Stephens, a contributing columnist at The New York Times, writes of a wise editor who once observed that the easiest decision a reader can make is to stop reading.

It’s all too true. Consider the number of articles in today’s paper that you’ve just stopped, or will stop reading before reaching the end. This article could be one of them.

The American journalist and political commentator continues: “This means that every sentence has to count in grabbing the reader’s attention, starting with the first.”

The ideal reader of an op-ed (opinion article) is the ordinary person of normal intelligence, who will be happy to learn something from the writer, provided he can readily understand what the writer is saying.

“It is for a broad community of people that the op-ed author must write, not the handful of fellow experts you seek to impress with high-flown jargon, the intellectual rival you want to put down with a devastating aside or the VIP you aim to flatter with an oleaginous adjective,” Stephens writes.

EXPERTISE
He says readers will also look to authors who have standing, either because they have expertise in their field or unique experience of a subject:

“If you can offer neither on a given topic you should not write about it, however passionate your views may be.”

However, writers with no expertise or name recognition are likelier to get published by following an 80-20 rule (80 per cent new information, 20 per cent opinion), he says.

Stephens’s article, Tips for Aspiring Op-Ed Writers, published on August 26, 2017, can be accessed at https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/25/opinion/tips-for-aspiring-op-ed-writers.html.

* * *
I wish I were that ordinary reader of op-eds that Bret Stephens talks about.

After the February 20, 2018 deadline for applications for NMG columnists and contributors that were channelled through the public editor’s email address, I have been buried under a pile of more than 1,500 applications.

These include cover letters, resumes and sample articles, all of which I have to read and I am still reading.

Many of the applicants sent lengthy curriculum vitae (CVs) instead of résumés (a condensed version of a full CV, usually one to two pages that quickly and concisely convey one’s skills and qualifications).

APPLICATIONS

A résumé provides the information most relevant to a position applied for — unlike a CV, which tends to tell all.

Many also sent more than one sample article or included Internet links to their blogs and published works. Others sent their applications after the deadline without compunction.

All the same, every applicant deserves to be treated with respect and none should be disqualified on a technicality.

This means a lot of reading. Assuming every applicant submitted one 650-word sample article as required, I have more than 975,000 words to read, excluding cover letters, certificates, résumés and CVs.

EDITORIAL
That is like having to read, and without the same rewards, seven books of the same length as Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Petals of Blood (131,760 words) and The River Between (46,360 words) and a novella of about 6,000 words to boot!

Of course, as they say in publishing, “You don’t have to eat the whole ox to know that it is tough”.

But that saying, attributed to English critic and lexicographer Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), may not be exactly applicable in this case.

We anticipated, correctly, a large number of applicants and the announcement stated that only successful applicants would be contacted.

It is also important to remember that the public editor is only your representative in the Editorial Department. He does not make decisions on what to publish or whom to hire.

Send your complaints to [email protected]. Text or call 0721 989 264