To me, summer means one thing: The State News needs more guest columnists. Guest columnists are the voices of the community represented in the pages of the paper. We want to hear what people are thinking about. It might only entail one column every two weeks (hopefully), but with a circulation of tens of thousands, the reach of those words is substantial.

There is no monetary compensation for writing, but the opportunity to talk to — or at — peers, professors, MSU administrators and the general public is a reward in itself. The newspaper offers instant gratification with the byline. The fruits of labor will be evident almost immediately, a relatively rare occurrence when it comes to writing of any sort.

Naturally, The State News is after more than simply offering gratification to anyone who seeks it. This page is a community space. Opinion is the reflection of the effects and the feeling of communities when news takes place.

We are looking for individuals who see something in the news and know that there is another story to tell.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention opinion writing is a double-edged sword. Each reader who picks up the paper brings a different kind of experience and viewpoint to each article. They see things from a perspective writers don’t always anticipate. Nowhere is this more evident than in the commentary section.

I want to say this is a position of prestige where the public reads the words of the columnist, thoughtfully rubs their chins and then cultivates a well-thought out reply in a letter to the editor. That is rarely the case. For any topic, one can expect at least 50 percent of the readers to disagree with any expressed opinion. It is rare for those who agree to inform the writer.

Instead, a guest columnist can look forward to the 10 percent of readers who really don’t like whatever stance was taken to sound off in the comments. I don’t want to undermine my pitch, but it can get rough.
Commenters — who I wager are in the minority — are among the few people who will actually speak up. Most readers will probably never say anything, whether or not they agree with what was said. That doesn’t mean they’re not paying attention. For example, the last paper I worked for had a columnist who was particularly controversial. He typically espoused a conservative viewpoint — a tough sell on most college campuses — and he wasn’t too shy about how he felt about any hot-button issue of the day.

These traits — fearlessness, willingness to take on hard subjects — are a few of the hallmarks of good column writing. Tiptoeing around something because it is taboo or contentious is not conducive to provoking debate. Writing opinion is not about what the columnist thinks, but what he or she can reason through.

That brings me back to the columnist from my last paper. I didn’t like the guy, but my objections were based on the fact that not only could he barely back up most of the things he said, but when he did, it was terribly done. In other words, it was the kind of writing a columnist should avoid.

One should expect disagreement with a point raised in a column, but it should be about the topic at hand and not because the foundations for the opinion were weak. In the case of the aforementioned columnist, I saw his column on the refrigerator of a random house where I used to play beer pong. I don’t remember what that particular column was about, but I do remember the words written under it:

“This guy is a (expletive deleted) idiot.”

The public eye can be inhospitable. From time to time, however, it looks favorably on those who step forward to share their views on the world around them.

David Barker is the State News opinion editor. Reach him at barkerd@msu.edu.