Becoming influential columnists -- hated or cherished

After winning the November 2008 election President-elect Barack Obama visited the house of one of America's most influential conservative columnist George Will on the evening of January 13, 2009. During and after dinner, he chatted with few other guests of George - some of Obama's harshest critics. The morning after - as equal opportunity chatter-- he met with a select group of friendly and influential left-leaning columnists and commentators (CAC). Obama's meeting with CACs is a manifestation of how politicians and policy-makers weigh the opinion makers of this country. They're everywhere - participating on TV and radio talk shows and blogging on the internet, in addition to writing their columns on domestic and global issues. Their words influence public opinions on local, state, and national politics and policies, passing bills in the Congress, and molding the President's views in reshaping the country's present and future discourses. We don't see these powerful plays of the media people in Bangladesh for obvious reasons: Democracy here is primarily driven by election-winning and power-grabbing strategies and the rest we know what they do thereafter. Here media is at the borderline of being "partly free" from "not free". With some exceptions, CACs aren't very influential because a very few politicians and people (PAP) read newspapers -- let alone reading opinion columns and commentaries. In a country wide survey of 2,252 respondents conducted over the period December 2004 - January 2005 by the Centre for Alternatives, Dhaka revealed that only 7.0 per cent or 10.5 million people (0.07 x 150 million population) read newspaper regularly, while 69% never do. Assuming about 80,000 country-wide circulation of English dailies and an average of three readers per issue, the total number of readers of English dailies is approximately 240,000 (approximately 0.16 per cent of the population or 2.3 per cent of the regular newspaper readers). Columnists in Bangladesh also want to influence all aspects of the country's affairs through their writings. But that's an impossible task to expect of them given so few PAP read newspapers and opinion columns. Politicians don't read opinion columns because it is about them and their mischief --and so why would they subject themselves to a virtual self -incrimination. Many readers often ask me how to write "good articles" and the kind of formal training I have had as a writer. Believe it or not, lack of exposure to any form of journalism training is my Achilles heel and I have been chasing that "elusive goal of writing good articles "ever since my first article was published in this paper in March 2005 on hartal written on a hartal day while visiting Dhaka. However, during these years I have learned a few things: l Writing an 800 words long article is much harder than a writing one of 1200 words or longer. l The longer is an article the less appealing it is to readers because of time constraints; l Writing concisely requires immaculate command over the language and masterly strokes in crafting the ideas; l Reading passionately will help uncover the key elements as to how influential columnists assimilate their ideas, open and close various parts, interlace quotes and statistics. l Reading your favorite columnists' writings will help you discover that each has a voice and a style that is inimitable and nearly pristine. l By writing quality articles -powerful in messages and enjoyable in reading-- one can create an admiring readers' base. l Reading articles on a variety of topics written by various influential columnists on a regular basis may be a panacea to developing one's writing style and succinctness. l Always remember - readers are intellectually as focused as you are. Mediocrity will drive them away; l Finally, avoid using "I" (first person) as much as possible. Watching some TV talk-shows and skimming through many newspaper articles in recent times I'm seeing how fast our people are emerging as a linguistically hamstrung and communicably deficient nation -- especially in English. . The country's clueless nostalgia with Bangla language including adopting Bangla medium in our education system is primarily responsible for it. To be a widely read columnist one must develop different strokes for different readers -and different columns as well. That requires expanding expertise and versatility in more than one area -mostly through interest driven self-learning. This'll help piecing-together splinters of issues or dissect issues only to tailor the relevant parts into a riveting story with some humor and hay as appropriate. For example, writing on pure economic issues without the muck of politics and politicians would be boring to readers. Having feedbacks about the quality of your writings and the issues readers enjoy reading can be a useful guide to future writing. One may get some inkling about one's writings from the readers and the editorial board of the newspaper in which you publish your opinion and commentaries. Writing week after week on different topics while maintaining the column's veracity and quality is a daunting pressure and a self-driven challenge to tackle head on. The readers want columnists to hit those who hurt people's interest and the country's image. That sets the stage for controversy and a collision course with politicians -- one on which columnists mostly thrive and become widely known either by being disliked or cherished. Writer, formerly a physicist and nuclear engineer, is a Professor of Economics at Eastern Michigan University. He can reached at e-mail : adewan@emich.edu