Good opinion writing should demonstrate credibility and shape minds. Unfortunately, most misses the mark because it is ill conceived, badly executed and lacks a compelling central thought. This interactive, half-day workshop for journalists and communications professionals will give you the confidence to plan, commission and write with authority and purpose. It will uncover techniques for identifying relevant topics and for developing absorbing themes. It will help you build content with a coherent narrative using ‘killer’ supporting evidence. And it will give you the tools to engage the audience from the very first line.

Agenda:

1. Introductions and objectives

Exercise #1: From the morning papers and the weeklies. What works? What

doesn’t?

2. What is thought leadership?

o An original thought vs. An original expression of an existing thought

Exercise #2: Deconstructing an opinion piece from specialist publication

3. Topic. Theme. Point: the three elements of opinion writing

o Choosing a topic

o Developing a theme

o Identifying key thought/point

Exercise #3: Crafting key thought/point

4. Getting the structure right

o Getting in (and out) of a piece

o 6 intro techniques to deploy

Exercise #4: Writing an op-ed opening

o Building a coherent narrative

o Using supporting evidence

Exercise #5: Developing the opinion piece

5. Recap: 10 opinion writing dos and don’ts

About the trainer

Jon Bernstein is an award-winning journalist, editor and digital strategist. He was deputy editor, then digital director, at the New Statesman; multimedia editor at Channel 4 News; ran the Channel 4 FactCheck website during the 2005 general election; editor-in-chief of Directgov, working in the Cabinet Office’s eGovernment Unit; and editor-in-chief of dotcom startup and technology website silicon.com. In 2011, he was named Website Editor of the Year by the British Society of Magazine Editors for Newstatesman.com.

Image via Shutterstock

On Tuesday 27 November, a group of experts gathered at the Frontline Club to discuss the issues and nuances that surround the task of: Covering poverty in an indifferent world. This subject was recently explored by the BBC’s Why Poverty? series in an episode covering the campaigning efforts of Bob Geldof and Bono, and the resulting phenomena were also addressed by the panel.

Covering poverty in an indifferent world panel discussion

The Live Aid and Make Poverty History movements have been criticised for failing to fully achieve their ambitious aims. But today – as writer and activist Paul Vallely explained – millions of lives have been saved due to the public’s response and lobbying efforts in fora such as the Gleneagles G8 Summit in 2005.

“Most aid works, yet that’s not the perception as it comes across in the media.”

Paul Vallely also criticised an attitude of ‘cognative dissidance’ from issues of poverty as seen in the media today. This reflects, he said, an attitude of wilful ingnorance and cynicism currently adopted by many:

“They feel they want to defend the status quo which includes them not having to take any kind of responsibility for the fact that they are in a exploitative relationship with a lot of the other people in the world.”

On, the other hand, Andrew Hogg, head of media at Christian Aid, argued that in fact it is a matter of messaging:

“In terms of getting people to address that poverty, when it is presented in terms that they can understand, at the moment the door seems to be further open than it is closed.”

So what terms are currently being used to the most effect when communicating these issues? Lilie Chouliaraki, Professor of Media and Communications at LSE, proposed that currently a ‘post- humanitarian’ form of solidarity prevails. This approach, she said, moves the focus away from those who are suffering and onto the self:

“It’s about ‘us’, it’s about how we feel good, and by feeling good we are also contributing to other people’s well being… no distant sufferers are being portrayed in these campaigns, the others are completely left outside.”

It is within this paradigm that we find a significant use of celebrity she argued.

In defense of a celebrity focussed strategy, Jamie Drummond, co-founder and executive director of ONE explained:

“Every time somebody says ‘I hate it when celebrities are used to promote a cause, my answer is ‘well let’s try and get that cause, that mission, to get the same amount of coverage without a celebrity – what would it take? … Until we can do that, sometimes, we’ve got to live in the world we live in, we’ve got to use them, but we’d all like not to.”

As a closing thought, Lilie Chouliaraki added:

“Perhaps we can reverse the terms and then say ‘well why don’t we use that celebrity, that popular culture to celebritize people who are not celebrities yet, but who are doing incredible work… and make them the heros that they diserve to be.'”

Watch the full event here:

The day after a public intervention from MI5 Director General Jonathan Evans, a panel as divided as it was well-informed, debated the merits of the government’s draft Communications Bill. The Frontline Club was packed and the feisty discussion began with each specialist setting out their pitch.

Professor Anthony Glees, billing himself as the “skunk at the picnic”, was unapologetic in his support for the proposals, which he said would merely extend powers that the security services already have to include newer forms of technology. Eschewing the arguments that have characterised the debate in the national press, he stated that:

 “A lack of trustfulness is the real problem here. The Bill, I’m entirely comfortable with it, I have no problem with it. In fact I’d want my money back if our security community did not attempt to extend on to the new media the things that already exist.”

Liberty’s Isabella Sankey offered a robust response. Denouncing the Bill as “rotten to the core”, she argued that it would infringe on principles of privacy and that if it were to fall into malicious hands, communications data could be extremely damaging.

David Davis MP joined Sankey with a scathing attack on the Bill, claiming the government had “the wrong aim, it was moving in the wrong direction and was starting from the wrong place.” Whilst supportive of the security agencies, Davis specified that the databases that will be created:

“[…] would be a honey pot. Not just of interest to the agencies but to every divorce lawyer in the country, paparazzi who might want to Ping where you are so they can come and photograph you. This is facilitating a breach of everybody’s privacy to almost no beneficial effect.”

Jamie Bartlett from think-tank Demos countered Davis’ argument, suggesting that British society regulates some forms of snooping and that privacy is not an absolute right – on some occasions being breached in the interests of national security. Bartlett was less troubled by security services increasing their powers than he was by the unregulated internet, controversially proposing that the Bill in some respects doesn’t go far enough:

“A police officer, a civil servant, anybody else can spend five minutes online and probably learn much more about you than he or she ever would do under the powers of this Bill. There are loads of serious questions here that I don’t think the Bill begins to address.”

The Q&A session was filled with poignant questions, including some on the effectiveness of the proposals when smart hackers are already able to use proxies and the “deep web” to hide their identity. The prospect of a generation of coders is sure to raise new dilemmas for future governments.

As for the here and now, the panellists left the stage having accepted that the public don’t currently foster much trust in the police, MPs or the security services and that this is something that needs to change if there’s to be a sensible, engaging debate on the proposals.

Watch the full event here:

On today’s agenda we have:

– A key note from Nik Gowing on the ‘new tyranny of shifting information power in crises‘.

– A discussion between General Sir Mike Jackson, Ed Mortimer and Alastair Campbell setting the military and political background. 

– A panel on the current problems and opportunities in the field of strategic communications.

– An address and Q&A with Alastair Campbell.

– A panel on information ecologies and grass roots campaigns.

Hopefully, I’ll be able to put up another blog post (or two) later in the day. But I’ll have to see what the wireless/power situation is like at the event before I make any rash promises…