The quote, "the primary purpose of an opinion piece is to leave the reader in absolutely no doubt about what they should think about an issue or event" (Pape and Featherstone, 2006) sums this text up perfectly. The 9 pages dedicated to crafting opinion articles meticulously outlines the dos and don'ts for new writers. From what type of subjects might be good to explore, to the position that a writer must be in, in order to write an opinion column. Advice such as don't sit on the fence and know your subject inside out was expected, though no less important than the rest of the information.

But it goes much further than that too. Before this weeks' task, I was under the impression that writing an opinion column would be a little easier than a regular news article, but as outlined here, it can be extremely difficult. Just having a belief about something doesn't necessarily make it easy to write about. I do believe that this advice, paired with other learning materials, helped form the opinion piece I wrote.  Simple things like have something to say influenced my decision making when choosing a topic. I found that I didn't really know a great deal about America, and so I decided to try and generalise the topic but link it to a topical event in order to make my opinion piece weightier. 

As usual, Susan Pape and Sue Featherstone don't simply expect the reader to take their word for it; this chapter is full of quotes and examples from established journalists, backing up anything the writers suggest. Examples of writing like John Diamond's Because Cowards Get Cancer Too will resonate with me for a long time, as it provided great detail about how to write in a witty and entertaining way, even when covering such a melancholic subject. 

Finally, I found that some of this advice could spill over into other forms of feature writing, or even different types of media (film for example). In future, when writing about, filming of photographing something with the intention of publishing, I'll think about what's written on page 101. 'But what does this tell the reader? What lessons can be learned? What moral has come into play? What is the point of writing such a piece?'.