COMM 209: Tips from op-ed piece, email (smiley face)

In class Friday we were talking about how to take a cliche and turn it around into something fresh. Here's an example from an op-ed piece in Sunday's Washington Post (sometimes called WaPo for short). It's by Michael Signer, a lawyer and national security consultant who worked for John Edwards' presidential campaign.

We've all heard the cliche about going out on a limb, right? It means taking a risk, getting involved with something. Look how Signer turns it around as he makes his case the media don't pay enough attention to national security issues:

The last year has thrown a dizzying array of foreign policy challenges at the United States. We deployed an additional 30,000 troops to Iraq. Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad blustered their way across the world stage. Russian President Vladimir Putin flirted with a new cold war with Washington. Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in Pakistan.

And, of course, we all continue to live in the chilly shadow of 9/11.

You might imagine that such red-hot foreign policy issues, combined with a wide-open presidential election, would spark a journalistic fire so intense it would force candidates up into trees and out on limbs to defend their foreign policy positions.

But you'd be dreaming.

So it's the same cliche. But Signer elaborates on it. And he does something else, too. There's a hint of another figure of speech, too, a metaphor about hunting dogs treeing a raccoon. He's from Virginia, so thoughts of coon dogs would come naturally to him.

Signer's piece is worth reading for a couple of reasons. One is he's absolutely right about the national media. (You don't have to agree with Edwards' policy positions to agree with him on this one.) The other is that it's a very well written opinion piece. Here's another snippet:

Sometime in the summer, I asked a major Washington journalist why we weren't seeing any rich comparative articles on foreign policy. He looked at me and said, "But you guys haven't done anything on foreign policy." I took a deep breath and recited the major speeches Edwards had already delivered. He thought a moment and then said, "You know, you're right." I implored him to write something substantive about our major proposals -- on global aid, national security, veterans issues and Iraq. He readily agreed. "I owe you guys a piece," he said. "I'll write it."

It never happened.

Good dialog. Very clear writing. See how short the sentences are? And look how both times Signer leads up to a very short paragraph for emphasis.

Makes it stand out, doesn't it?

As long as we're looking at media stories for style, here's one that appeared in The Onion over the weekend. Billing itself as "America's Finest News Source," The Onion traffics in satire rather than news. Satire has a way of backfiring on people who try to use it, but The Onion has the language of much routine news reporting nailed.

Really nailed, as Signer might say.

So here's the story that caught my eye. It ran Sunday under the headline "E-Mail From Aunt Accidentally Opened." The lede:

CHICAGO—An otherwise routine e-mail-checking session went wrong when college student Gwen Petersen, 20, accidentally opened a message sent by her Aunt Sophie in Michigan, sources reported Monday.

After correctly identifying the sender as KalamazooLady5237@aol.com, her mother's sister and a 57-year-old guidance counselor present at Petersen's birth, Petersen attempted to properly delete the unwanted correspondence as she had many times before. But one mistaken click of the mouse began an ordeal that would overtake Petersen's in-box for several minutes—thrusting the history major into an HTML-formatted world she "never intended to see."

"As soon as I clicked on it, I realized what I'd done, but by then it was too late," Petersen told reporters following the error. "With as much time as I spent talking to her on her birthday and Thanksgiving, something like this was bound to happen. I should have been paying closer attention."

And here's the "billboard" or nut graf:

The moment her computer's hourglass icon finished spinning, Petersen was subjected to a vast compendium of mass-circulated poetry, pet humor, and inspirational aphorisms with vague underlying religious motivations. Without needing to scroll down, Petersen further noted that the e-mail featured a background wallpaper of cartoon ducks, as well as numerous typographical errors and a large banner spelling out "You got 2 love this!" in a rainbow-colored, bouncing font.

The e-mail was also embedded with a midi version of the song "Wind Beneath My Wings."

Do you get this stuff too? The language of newspaper journalism isn't the only language The Onion has nailed.

Or run up a tree.