Opinion forming > Opinion having

If you already know what you think before you start, is it worth writing?

The standard way opinion journalism works is, you have an opinion, you pitch a thing about it, and if it’s accepted, you write it. The opinion comes first. Then you read up on it, maybe interview a couple of people, give yourself over in body and soul to the joys of confirmation bias, file it, and pat yourself on the back for what a good job you did. And look, I’ve done my fair share of that over the years, so I’m not here to cast stones because it’s what we all do.

This model has serious problems, though. If you start with the answer and work backward to find the arguments to back up that answer, well, you’re pretty surely not going to find the arguments against the answer. You may cite them defensively (the dreaded “to be sure” graf) — but you won’t engage with them with a genuinely open mind.

It doesn’t have to be this way. You can also write about questions where you don’t know what you think before you start. Where you take the reader by the hand and bring him with you on a process of discovery, showing your work as you describe how you came to hold the opinions you now have.

This doesn’t mean you come with no priors. Everybody comes at every question with priors. It means you don’t treat your priors as controlling precedent for your opinion. And you research, really research, not just to cherry-pick quotes that reflect what you already thought but to learn something.

Thomas B. Edsall at the New York Times is the absolute master at this. He comes at questions with values and standards but not positions. It makes his column tremendously exciting to read; we could all learn a thing or two from him. (And yes, I’m looking straight at ya, Mr. Krugman.)

This is probably much easier to do if you’re writing about a question you genuinely don’t have a strong opinion about. But even where you do know what you think, you can look for framing that takes you out of your comfort zone and creates some guardrails against out-of-control confirmation bias.

It takes effort, though. And editors mostly don’t really demand it. So it will remain a minority pursuit.

Worth pursuing, though…