Blog
March 5th 2010
Your opinion matters, too
Writing and editing the comments section of The Uniter is an interesting experience.
Unlike other forms of journalism, which tends to rely on the opinions of others, or telling a story without casting overt judgement, comments writing is a different beast altogether.
It relies on fact. But it mostly relies on opinion. It does away with notions of objectivity, fairness, and a lot of other values journalism is pretended to uphold.
At the same time, it is a necessary part of any newspaper, current affairs magazine, and has become an even more practised concept with the rise of the blogosphere. ‘Commentary’ in a loosely-journalistic sense is everywhere these days. Now that everyone can conceivably be their own brand, they can also elevated to the level of ‘critic’.
Which brings along a host of problems, not the least of which being the common criticism levelled at public commentators: Just who asked for your opinion anyways?
This question has a lot of answers, but my personal favourite can be summed up by one of today’s best (in that he is controversial and thought-provoking) public commentators, Christopher Hitchens.
In his book Letters to a Young Contrarian, Hitchens addresses this question by writing that “the right and warrant of an individual critic does not need to be demonstrated in the same way as that of the holder of power. It is in most ways its own justification.”
As part of its role as a community paper, The Uniter is open to all who wish to submit commentary to its pages. These pages specifically are aimed at provoking debate about the serious and non-serious alike.
Thus, you may have noticed that, like last year, the past two issues have featured a debate of sorts surrounding the state of Christianity in 2010, spearheaded by the University of Winnipeg’s Volunteer Chaplain Jack Duckworth. One writer writes a response to Duckworth, but this does not mean that the debate is over.
The real point of this series, and the comments section in general, is to get people talking. One way to do this is to write in a good, old-fashioned letter to the editor. The less space-constrained method is commenting on articles on this website, which is easy to do as long as you log into this site on a free account.
In keeping with the social media theme of this week’s print issue, The Uniter team welcomes you to weigh in on what you read.
As comments editor, I would especially welcome your opinions, because they are equally important as the ones offered by the people who get their pictures in the paper—which, by the way, is anyone who wants to do so.
Discussion
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