A rookie editorial writer’s first lessons

By Ruben Navarrette, Jr.

It has been like learning to walk again. I’ve been a writer-for-hire for 12 years now. I’ve written a book, a dozen 2,000 word magazine essays, and hundreds of op-eds in newspapers around the country. In my first newspaper job, which came along after all that, I filed stories as a reporter in the first year and two columns a week in the second.

But until six months ago, I had never had a writing job where the daily regimen includes squeezing reporting, analysis, opinion, and advocacy into 400 words — and doing it in about 2 hours. Having, at times, spent months, then years, in solitude at my computer, finishing a book or pounding out freelance pieces nor was I much accustomed to having to engage in such collaborative efforts as regular board meetings, planning sessions, and in-house interviews with everyone from political candidates to those who run non-profit organizations.

Now, that’s what I do. I’m an editorial writer for one of the largest and best newspapers in the country. In my spare time, I’m kicking off a new, twice-a-week nationally syndicated column. The columns I know my way around. I’ve even taught classes on how to build them. But, even after six months, where my editorials come from is a mystery.

Part of the riddle comes from how difficult it is to believe that — considering the space limitations, time constraints, and the difficulty in getting a half-dozen talented, insightful and opinionated writers to agree on anything — one ever manages to get anything down on paper. But there is more to it. In the often-hasty construction of every single editorial, my biggest challenge has been to provoke thought without picking a fight, to advocate a given course of action without sounding preachy, and, overall, to advance the discussion on a given issue rather than set it backward.

There’s something about trading in words that convinces you rather quickly that there already far too many of them out there — in newspapers, in books, in national magazines, and now on the Internet — for writers to take up the remaining space with words that are unessential or of minimal use to people’s everyday lives. News consumers have more choices than ever, and that means that, in a world where everyone is entitled to an opinion and has one, those who record their opinion for a living have an extra burden to make their viewpoints count for something.

We all dream of writing that makes a difference. We all struggle to put down on paper just the right words, the right phrasing, the right argument to inspire leaders to be more visionary and daring, to convince readers to pay more taxes for a public transportation system or better schools, or to get any government body from city hall to congress to provide better service to its constituents, our readers. I would imagine that, down deep inside, people in our profession still believe that words move people and that ideas can bring down walls as efficiently as cannon balls.

I’m just starting this education, but I look forward to the lessons ahead. I expect to get better at this format as time goes on. I expect to, one day, reach a point where I am as confident and passionate in writing editorials as I have come to be in writing signed columns.

Only then, will the mystery be solved.

Navarrette is an editorial writer for The Dallas Morning News and a nationally syndicated columnist for the Washington Post Writers Group.