In my humble opinion: what I reckon about reckons

Opinion pieces – you're reading one! – cop a bit of bad press.

"This isn't real journalism!" cry critics, conveniently setting aside the fact that most opinion writers aren't journalists, and when journalists do write them, they're sharing opinions, not doing journalism.

Mostly, though, the criticisms spring from disagreeing with the opinions being shared, or sometimes, just not liking the person sharing them.

Neither of these holds much water. To even see something you disagree with, in our algorithmically curated online world, isn't easy. Social media feeds are engineered to reflect our biases, not challenge them. So reading a challenging point of view now and then is a good thing. (Personally, I go out of my way to follow people online whom I don't even remotely agree with.)

As for writing off the content because you don't like the person (or type of person) writing it, that's just a little closed-minded. I'm reminded of the advertising legend of the agency founder who would carry a typed note in his pocket to refer to when challenged by a client on some point of creative brilliance. It read: "They might be right."

Just as a stopped clock is famously right twice a day (millennials, ask your analogue-watch-owning parents), even someone you despise might actually have a point now and then.

If you read it.

Luckily, people do. Well-written op eds on topics that capture people's imaginations are some of the most read and engaged-with pieces of content on any website, including this one.

It's not just true for columnists.

As a thoroughly modern advertising agency owner, I indulge in a range of semi-professional side hustles. Writing pieces like this is one of them. For a while, coaching TED speakers was another. over five years I worked with almost 100 scientists, activists, artists and politicians, helping them share their ideas with a global online audience. These days I apply the same kaupapa when I coach corporate speaker clients.

A powerful TED talk, I would tell my speakers, needs three things. Firstly, an idea. Not ten ideas, not zero ideas. An idea. Secondly, the skill to get the idea across on stage. Coaching this took time, but we almost always got there. Finally – and here's the link with opinion pieces – a personal connection. Leave that out, and all you have is facts (you know, like journalists are into). And if all you have is facts, you might as well save your talk as a Word Document and email it to the audience.

Bring your own story, your own experiences, triumphs, tragedies and perspective to the facts, and you might have something worth reading.

I'm not alone in holding this opinion. Oscar Wilde once famously wrote that the only subject worthy of discourse is oneself*.

Great journalism is beyond important; it's essential. I love it and consume it from myriad sources at all hours of the day. It tells me what's going on and why it matters.

But great opinion pieces matter too. They challenge me. They deliver opinions from writers who range from the very few people who are just like me, to the very many people who are not.

Not everyone agrees with this take on opinion pieces. One local news website announced last week it was dropping them entirely – despite its columnists regularly occupying the most-viewed and most-commented spots on the site's own league tables.

As luck would have it, I ran into a journalist from that site just the other day and asked them how the change was going.

"You'd be after my opinion then," they said, with a twinkle in their eye. "Sorry mate, we only deal in facts."

Then, off the record, they told me how they really felt. Gave me their take on the move. Told me what they reckoned about the whole thing and how they thought it would pan out.

It was a bloody great yarn.

*He didn't say that – I did. Told you I wasn't a journalist.