{"id":190,"date":"2021-09-25T12:40:34","date_gmt":"2021-09-25T16:40:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/publicdiscourse\/?p=190"},"modified":"2025-10-09T12:19:17","modified_gmt":"2025-10-09T16:19:17","slug":"op-eds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/publicdiscourse\/op-eds\/","title":{"rendered":"OP-EDS"},"content":{"rendered":"

Op-eds offer students an immediate means to communicate with a public audience, and, if published on an established platform, can offer the added benefit of editorial intervention by professional journalists.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Platforms include local newspapers in the op-ed or letter to the editor section, amateur digital platforms such as <\/span>Medium<\/span><\/i>, professional digital platforms like <\/span>Ms<\/span><\/i>. <\/span>Magazine<\/span><\/i>, or even national outlets like the <\/span>HuffPost<\/span><\/i> and <\/span>The New York Times<\/span><\/i>. Students can also submit to the op-ed section of Smith\u2019s paper <\/span>The Sophian <\/span><\/i>as guest writers.<\/span><\/p>\n

Methods<\/b><\/p>\n

Op-eds can be stand-alone writing assignments focused on an area of interest within the course. Ideally, the assignment should capture an actual point of view held by the student, rather than one assigned by the professor. The op-ed assignment should therefore be broad enough for multiple perspectives to be possible.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For instance, students in Nancy Cohen\u2019s section of WRT\/ENG 136: Journalism: Principles and Practice write an op-ed on how news organizations can regain public trust. In the assignment, Cohen suggests that students address the question through one of five themes discussed earlier in the course: fairness, objectivity, bothsides-ism, fact checking, or choice of sources.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Another effective op-ed assignment asks students to adapt a previous academic essay (written earlier in the course) into an op-ed. This assignment encourages students to see the op-ed as a research and fact driven and dependent form.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Francine Kiefer of <\/span>The Christian Science Monitor<\/span><\/i> has taught an interterm course on op-ed writing at Smith and has generously provided her handouts for structuring an effective op-ed, included <\/span>here<\/span><\/a> as the \u201cOP-ED TOOLBOX\u201d and the \u201cPERSONAL ESSAY TOOLBOX.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Besides advancing a specific opinion, op-eds are driven by researched fact, a fact sometimes overlooked by students. While op-eds use journalistic attribution and not a works-cited list, students should be encouraged to create a works cited list for the purposes of the assignment, backing up their claims with facts, data and statistics.<\/span><\/p>\n

Op-eds also capitalize on the writer\u2019s \u201cplatform,\u201d or personal and professional identity in the public sphere. Students should be encouraged to consider their own platform in relation to their topic of choice. Many publications are hungry for youth voices, so students should be encouraged not to consider their young age a liability, but instead explicitly center their youth perspective. A student writing about the medical system may have had a chronic illness or experienced a sports injury. A student writing about the environment may have participated in a program studying coral reefs, be a thesis student in the sciences, or be a member of an activist organization.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Learning Goals<\/b><\/p>\n