I was appointed to train our senior and junior students about editorial writing in preparation of the municipal schools press conference to be hosted by Balayang High School from August 2 - 3, 2018. These young journalists are already providing important leadership in our profession and they have an extraordinary opportunity and extraordinary examples to shape journalism in their careers.
Equipping these learners with the skill in writing editorials, below are essentials they need before the the Municipal Schools Press Conference (MSPC). Best of luck to my trainees namely Jamaica Patron, Elena Ramos, Jacquilyn Escobar, John Russel Jacinto, Joyce Ann Polido, Princess Ann Garabiles, Cherry Racuya, Denise Balana and Shella Mae Nacario.
Our students will be competing in various categories with English and Filipino divisions:
Editorial writing
News writing
Sports news writing
Feature writing
Cartooning
Copyreading and headline writing ( skipped this year)
Collaborative desktop publishing
The Philippine government institutionalized campus journalism training in the school system with the Campus Journalism Act of 1991.
And our photos during those training.
Tips on Writing Newspaper Editorial Format
An editorial is a newspaper article that expresses one's opinion. An editorial can be about any topic, but is usually written about an issue that deals with our society. To build credibility, the opinion in the editorial must be backed up with facts and evidence to substantiate your opinion.
The facts and evidence must be gone through extensively to find the point of view you want to argue. With a point of view through an editorial piece, issues are given solutions that could be rendered to solve the actual problem at hand. A newspaper editorial may seem hard to write; but, initiative and passion about an issue gives you, the writer, the inside knowledge of making editorial writing easier.
Steps for Writing Newspaper Editorials
There are several different steps you need to follow in order to be successful when writing an editorial:
Choosing a Topic
The topic you choose is the most important part in writing a newspaper editorial. The best topics are those that are current issues among our society. If the topic is a current issue that everyone is already interested in then your editorial piece will engage reader’s attention.
If the topic you choose is an ongoing issue in our society, make sure to use the most recent information. However, you can use older information as sources to help prove your case. Do not make your editorial a controversial topic, unless that is that is your whole reason for writing it in the first place.
Choosing Your Opinion
You need to ask yourself, are you for or against the issue you have chosen as your topic for your newspaper editorial piece. You can not be on both sides of the fence when writing an editorial piece. The purpose for the editorial is to give your opinion, the writer’s opinion. With this in mind you must give a strong opinion, if not readers will not be as inclined to see your point of view.
Outline Your Editorial
Oh, the dreaded outline. With any type of research paper you have to do an outline. This is one of the biggest tips on writing newspaper editorial format that you should always follow. With an outline you know where you stand on the issue. The outline helps you, the writer, get your thoughts and opinions in order. The outline also helps you discover any swaying of opinions you may have missed by just diving head first into writing.
Writing Your Article
The first step to writing your newspaper editorial is to pick a headline that grabs reader’s attention. If you grab their attention from the very beginning they are more inclined to keep reading. Your opinion on the topic should be addressed in the introduction to your new editorial.
Newspaper editorials should have at least three arguments. These arguments of course should be backed up with facts and evidence from your research of the topic.
Other tips for writing editorials are:
Use statistics to help prove your argument.
Make sure your strongest argument is left for last.
Do not be passive in the arguments that come before the strongest. If this happens you are most likely not going to have readers reading your entire newspaper editorial.
Conclusion of Article
In a newspaper editorial, and with most anything else you write, your conclusion should sum up all the information you wrote about. The conclusion should be tied up into a neat little package so as to let readers get a recap of all the facts that you presented in your editorial.
Your conclusion should also have a few solutions you think would help with the issue at hand. You are getting the reader to engage in asking him or herself questions on how they stand on the particular issue in our society.
