The Role of a Columnist?

Royko.

Gravedigger.

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Get people talking about the game, which sells papers.

 

I think there are different roles a columnist can play.

At a smaller paper, you might need to play all the roles.

At a metro, especially one with a good, strong sports staff, you have columnists who fill those different roles.

For example, at the Hartford Courant in the 1990s, you had over the course of time, four different guys who were doing four different types of columns.

The late Alan Greenberg was the "Piss Off" columnist. You read him, so your hackles could be raised.

Owen Canfield was the warm, fuzzy, folksy columnist.

Jeff Jacobs was the storyteller, though he got to the "Piss Off" slot later on.

The late Bo Kolinsky was the high school guy.

It worked really well.

I think you can look at metro news staffs, even sometimes, smaller papers' staffs, and see the same thing.

 

Where can I sign up?

 

The role has changed a bit in the newspapers to online transition.

When we weren't measuring eyeballs instantly and in every conceivable way, you just had faith (and I suppose focus groups) that your columnist was worth readership. Now, you know.

So that person IS, in a sense, controversial for the sake of being so, although I still have enough Polyanna in me to hope and believe that when our columnists are out there with an opinion that gets people worked up and gets them Tweeted and Facebook and posted on message boards everywhere, they believe in that opinion and aren't just taking that position because they know it will piss people off. I'm comfortable right now that they do believe.

I believe that the columnist's job is to entertain (this has been Simers' simple goal since 1975) and afflict the comfortable; I'm not naive enough to believe that anything a sports columnist does comforts the afflicted.

 

Jimmy Breslin wrote "Digging JFK's Grave Was His Honor" for the New York Herald Tribune, November 26, 1963.

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Simplistic as it may be, the role of a columnist is to get folks to read his/her stuff. When that happens, folks buy the paper or provide online "clicks".

Some columnists create a following with humor; others with insight; others with "piss and vinegar". Each method can be successful and each can fail miserably depending on the writing talent of the columnist and the audience he/she is writing for.

 

A GOOD columnist isn't a shill for the team or a fan looking to start controversy. He should be well versed and able to get his opinions across without being a bully. A GOOD columnist makes someone pickup the paper, or click on his name to see what he is writing about, or go to a game to see it for themselves, or give the a scenario with an up close and personal view.
The list, once long, is very short.

 

. . . and it was a perfectly-executed, great idea.

 

Dammit!

Thank you.

Billy
A idiot at times, apparently.

 

Every job description here has been correct in its own way. That's why columnist is a hard job to do well. I think I did OK, but I was always dogged by a sense of failing to do better, and many times I sure could have. For whatever reason, the columnist has to be someone, not something but someone, the reader wants to spend time with.

 

Oh so true!!!!