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Most "Opinion Pages" combine pundits and experts, lifting some pundits up to (misperceived) "experts" and dragging some experts down to pundits. I wish we could have both, but separated, into "Opinion Pages" and "Expert Pages".
Hear me out. #Thread
Hear me out. #Thread
1. Clearly, there is a market for "Opinion Pages", where pundits give their opinion. I think, traditionally, they were seen as "experts" but these days many are there just as "people to loath" (who nevertheless retweet the pieces and thus sustain their loathed pundits careers).
2. Think about David Brooks, Thomas Friedman, and of course Brett Stephens at @nytopinion -- their opinion doesn't represent significant part of population, but it annoys liberal readers and thus creates "controversy" (ka-ching!).
3. But "Opinion Pages" can also have value by publishing the opinion (!) of relevant people, be they artists, musicians, politicians, etc.
4. "Experts" also often weigh in on "Opinion Pages". Most just want to explain what it going on, offsetting misinformation or shallowness in regular media coverage. But they are forced to include a prominent opinion, as it is "Opinion Page."
5. Moreover, often, after newspaper editors have had go at it, opinion has been amplified in piece, and made core of all-determining title, and "expert" content has been downplayed.
6. This makes unique contribution of "expert" (much) less, but also makes "expert" sound more like pundit -- to be judged by their "opinion" rather than their "expertise"..
7. While there is big difference in how much "expertise" versus "opinion" you can get into op-Ed, depending on outlet -- often much better in European than US outlets -- you still have to include "opinion" -- even when you are not particularly interested in expressing it.
8. Personally, I wish there was something like "Expert Pages", in which specific "experts" analyze a certain topic. Essential is their expertise, not their opinion.
9. These analyses would be written by real experts, not elevated pundits. Moreover, experts would only write about their specific expertise. No biologists writing about politics or politicians writing about diseases (except for political responses to it).
10. By definition, "Expert Pages" would have no weekly columnists and few monthly columnists. As no one is an expert on many different topics -- spoiler alert: not even Fareed Zakaria or Francis Fukuyama.
11. Yes, that also means that I would not write about health care policy in North America or compare environmental policy in Sweden and Spain.
12. Why doesn't any major outlet have such a page? I don't even know online outlets that have this? Although @voxdotcom has done a few of them.
13. To be clear, "expert" does not necessarily mean "professor", let alone at pedigree university, or even university-educated.
14. Sometimes you are looking for experiential expertise or practical expertise -- from engineers or maybe even carpenters, dj's, referees, etc.
15. Am I really the only one interested in such 1,000-1,500 word analyses on, for instance, how the Beirut explosion could be so powerful?; what consequences of covid-19 are on football?; how lockdowns affect children?
16. Not a piece by journalists interviewing 1-2 experts and writing their own story, 1-2 days after something happens, but a piece written by an expert and published 1-2 weeks later.
17. So that experts can be experts again and we don't confuse pundits with experts... #TheEnd