Op-Eds? How and to Whom

I’m a fairly lazy thinker and I prefer to outsource as much thinking as possible. In theory this enables me to do more thinking in less time than people who don’t. Op-eds don’t just tell you what happened, they tell you how you should feel about something as well. And they are effective, in a study by Alexander Coppock ,Emily Ekins and David Kirby they found that op-eds actually do change minds. Sometimes I don’t even bother with the op-ed and just skip straight to the comments section, the toxic landfill containing the op-eds on the op-eds. Op-eds sometimes respond to a rhetorical situation before all the facts have come out and use loose unlinked statistics to make their opinions seem relevant. Op-eds usually appeal to specific audiences but not to others. Sometimes the choir does need a preaching to and with a maximum word count certain rhetorical strategies might be sacrificed in favor of others.

     The hot take op-ed is a tragedy of the modern world. Now individuals can respond to something as it’s happening. I just pulled up the LA Times op-ed page and found one where Maria Shriver (yes that Maria Shriver) is warning of the future catastrophe of Alzheimers. As someone in the at-risk population this seemed relevant to me. Maria Shriver cites a number of compelling sources without hyperlinking them; the Department of Finance estimate, a poll conducted by the Women’s Alzheimer’s Movement and Genworth, and her own “2010 Shriver Report: A Woman’s Nation Takeson Alzheimer’s.”  (see it's not that hard!) None of these are linked making it difficult to fact check. I don’t see the words “peer-reviewed” anywhere.

    Who is Shriver writing to? The word “women” is mentioned in all three of her first sentences. This is definitely targeted at womenin the at risk population but she focuses on minorities who according to her are more than 1.5-2 times more at risk than the white population. I might add that she doesn’t provide a source for her statistics. But she mentions these groups right in the beginning, this would a hook that the Harvard Kennedy school advises every good op-ed should contain. People not in these groups might be turned off from reading the rest of the article while people in these groups would likely be more interested. 

     Many op-eds do this. By targeting your audience you are more likely to get a response. A blog titled “How Can Everyone in the World Profit With This One Weird Trick” versus “How Can Asian-American Men Over 45 Profit With This One Weird Trick.” If you don’t believe me you are scrolling down far enough when you finish reading your articles. The ads at the bottom are filled with them. And if it didn’t work, I doubt they’d spend the money on them.

     Mark Twain once attributed a saying to Benjamin Disraeli that “there are lies, damn lies, and statistics.” In Shrivers op-ed she cites statistics without sourcing them and then later provides a source but no way of verifying that source and no context in which to digest those statistics. But she isn’t writing to a skeptical audience of academics. She’s writing to the casual reader who already has a reasonable amount of trust in the publication. She’s not going to waste word count, ( as much as I wish she would) on doing deep dives into why the statistics are relevant or exactly what the sample size of the control group was. Instead Shriver struck an optimistic tone that suggest that we are on her side and we are winning as long as we keep pushing. As a professional journalist and First Lady of California, Maria Shriver has established her credibility and she knew exactly what she was doing with every word and statistic she cited. Oh and Mrs. Shriver, I’m a tenor can but I sing alto if you need. Let's kill Alzheimers before it kills me.