Over the last few weeks, I have received some animated emails from a promising new newspaper writer, Dr Sushil Sharma, who humbly requested advice on how to improve his newspaper articles.
I pointed out to him that his articles were already full of substance and good ideas (perhaps too many in each article) and commonsense, given that he is also good scientist (qualified meteorologist) and data driven, like me (he told me I taught him Statistics at USP in 1974).
So all I could advise Sushil on was how to improve his style of writing to get through to the ordinary Fijian reading public who, sadly given the dominance of audio and video communication today, are increasingly averse to reading “long” academic newspaper articles.
But Sushil’s request also drove home to me the incredible value of a lasting partnership between a creative writer and newspaper editors, in encouraging constructive dialogue in society on critical social issues- thereby also creating a “People’s Parliament” through the daily newspaper.
Of course, an added bonus can be ample space given by the newspaper to Letters to the Editor, allowing the public to also weigh in, in a way not possible in the politicians’ parliament which can easily become an “echo chamber”.
When thinking of my response to Dr Sharma’s request, I remembered a lecture I had given in 2007 to the USP journalism students and staff of Dr Shailendra Singh, with the whole hour long lecture (“A Pacific economist as a journalist”) fortunately video taped by one of the lecturers.
Later when I started my personal website NarseyOnFiji in 2012 to overcome the Bainimarama Government’s censorship, I posted that entire lecture (broken down into clips with subtitles etc).
(video) A Pacific economist as a journalist (lecture to USP Journalism Students, 2007).
The 2007 lecture to journalism students
IN my 2012 introduction to that post, I had written: “Academics do not usually make good journalists.” But the popular media is a most powerful way to reach ordinary people, far more than academic articles sitting in distant journals. This lecture to USP journalism students and staff was on the lessons I have learnt from my twenty five years of experience in writing for newspapers and what Pacific themes that Pacific journalism students might want to focus on over the next few years.”
I related that when I started teaching at USP in 1973, I was writing and publishing in academic journals without a care in the world whether anyone read them or not.
Then in 1985, my writing life changed for ever (see the video clips, with a summary below).
FT Sub-Editor: Who will read this crap, Wadan? (Clip 1)
In 1985, a prominent unionist (Mahendra Chaudhry) requested me to help the unions fight the Alliance Government’s wage freeze unilaterally imposed on workers, breaking years of tripartism.
My long analytical paper was later delivered to the Labour Summit which resulted in the establishment of the Fiji Labour Party of which I became chairman of the Policy Committee.
Mr Chaudhry requested me to write an article for The Fiji Times which could help counter the Alliance Government’s propaganda for the wage freeze.
So I wrote a draft article and took it to The Fiji Times sub-editor at the time, Vimal Madhavan, a great friend of mine from the days that he had been a USP student and graduate.
But Vimal’s response shocked me: “Who is going to read this crap, Wadan?” What? This mere sub-editor of The Fiji Times telling a USP Lecturer that his writing was “crap”?
But Vimal kindly took me aside and explained that writing full page articles for the ordinary reading public was very different (and far more demanding) than writing academic articles to be read by academics.
He explained how I could improve my writing style so that ordinary The Fiji Times readers would be encouraged to read a serious full page article (not about Hollywood or Bollywood or sex).
Write simply, Vimal said. Avoid long winded jargon laden sentences that go on for two or three paragraphs, certain to lose 99 per cent of ordinary readers.
Structure your article properly with introduction, middle bit and conclusion, so that it flows. Plus other advice which I explain below and in the video clips.
My eventual revised article appeared as “Alternatives to the Unilateral Wage Freeze” (FT February 1 1985).
Thus began my long stint as an OpEd writer for The Fiji Times , eventually producing more than six hundred articles between 1985 and 2026.
The 2007 lecture I gave to the journalism students brought out the lessons that I learnt over the previous 20 years about the nuts and bolts of good newspaper articles.
The Big Idea (Clip 1)
To interest readers, there must be a “big idea”: A new finding in some research you are doing, some social conflict, some tension, some debate: the article must be interesting to the public, otherwise forget it.
Sometimes the research might take weeks to run through thousands of data from some Pacific Bureau of Statistics, just to get one outstanding dramatic result which forms the core of the article, for example on population projections or incidence of poverty by ethnicity.
Sometimes there are burning issues like monopoly in the telecommunications industry or suicide of women killing themselves and their children.
Sometimes, publishing my views on such traumatic issues also brought about some kind of “catharsis” by sharing the burden with the reading public.
I reminded the journalism students that a full page article often only needs one big idea or just a few inter-related ones, not thousands of everything that interests you at the time.
Structure: Introduction, middle conclusion (Clip 2)
Writers should try to have a proper structure to the article: introduction, the middle and the conclusion.
I tend to write the middle part first, the substance of the article, taking one argument logically to the next, the next and the next. etc.
Then I will write the conclusion to summarise your findings and perhaps point the reader to further necessary research.
Then write the introduction to explain to the reader what exactly you are going to cover in the middle bit (the substance of your arguments) and sometimes even point to possible conclusions.
Readers who are in a hurry can read the introduction and the conclusion to understand the whole article, perhaps leaving the middle bit for later.
Interestingly, I later found that good academic PhD theses also have a similar structure: the introduction chapter introduces the big idea and hypotheses to be investigated by the research; the middle chapters then investigate and prove or disprove the hypotheses; and the final conclusion chapter brings all the chapter conclusions together reaching some grand conclusion, and pointing to possible areas of future research.
Importance of subtitles and title
Once the middle bits are written, make sure that every subsection has an accurate subtitle which explains the contents of that subsection.
Readers should be able to just skim through the subtitles in a two-page article in seconds, and know what the whole story is going to be.
For example one article I had titled “Fiji Population Growth Not a Time Bomb” was written in 1994 a period when international organisations worried about the population explosion taking place globally in the Third World, stretching resources everywhere. Fiji’s population from colonial days had an ethnic “time bomb” leading to political coups because the indigenous leaders felt threatened by the Indo-Fijians who outnumbered them in the sixties and seventies.
I did detailed population projections based on census data and fertility/mortality rates and discovered the startling big idea: Population was not a time bomb in Fiji. So my subtitles for that article should have read (I did not know better then):
Once Indo-Fijians did dominate and coups came (shown in graph)
Now Indo-Fijians less than Fijians and falling (shown in graph)
Ethnic Gaps growing wider (shown in graph)
Less competition for public resources in future;
Gaps even wider at the young ages (class 1);
Hopefully no more coups in future.
Those 1994 population projections are confirmed today in 2026 when indigenous Fijians are more than 65 per cent of the population (Indo-Fijians less than 30 per cent); indigenous Fijian political parties dominate Government and will forever (if proportionality in the electoral system is maintained).
Indo-Fijians will be less than 20 per cent of Fiji’s population in ten years time, hopefully ending ethnic conflicts for good.
Unfortunately, one or two editors (not many) have thought that subtitles are unimportant and give readers an entire page of text which few readers bother reading.
Sadly some editors also change your carefully thought out title to one which they think will attract more attention, sometimes an improvement, but more often not.
A cartoon is worth a thousand words
Watch Clip 3 which explains why I have tried and usually failed to convince editors to commission cartoons which can explain the big idea far more powerfully than a page full of words.
In an earlier book of articles I had published in 2004 (To Level the Playing Fields), I tried my own crude cartoons on: Suicides Xby women (killing their children too); “God is on our side” (“chosen people” appealing to God as their authority for doing anti-social things; Not a Level Playing Field in Super Rugby (between Pacific nations and the developed nations).
Readers might wish to go through the TruthForFiji website where there are hundreds of powerful cartoons conveying far more than articles of thousands of words.
Be fair to both sides of the argument (Clip 4)
However convinced you are of your own views, always do full justice to the opposing arguments. Never trivialise opposing views. Do not set up “straw men” who you then knock down.
In my video clip I give the great example of TV series The Practice and later Boston Legal where prosecuting lawyers prosecute to the best of their ability and defending lawyers defend to the best of their ability (even if they do not believe in their innocence). Justice is then administered by the jury and judge.
Similarly, writers of articles advocating some view must also fairly (like any good student) present opposing views: that is true knowledge, not “propaganda”.
For example, article forcefully arguing on moral grounds for some poor child to receive expensive overseas treatment must also point out that someone in the Ministry of Health will have to make the horrible decision who not to send (and who will later die) and also what may be serious life-threatening domestic effects of reallocating expenditures in the Ministry of Health.
Sadly, many newspaper writers today arrogantly refuse to acknowledge previous writers and writings as if they are the first to ever write on that particular topic. This is especially dishonest when the other writing is already published and even online. This would never be allowed in good academia.
My fault as an academic: Writing too much (Clip 7)
Academics’ articles are far too long, in our desperate urge “to get it all out of our system”. We try to be perfectionist and include every little idea that is linked to the big idea. We forget that the average newspaper reader is not interested in a PhD exposition of the Big Idea.
One unfortunate result of our verbosity is that the readers cannot see the beauty or ugliness of some “forest” we want to describe because the article has described too many “trees”.
My articles also used to have too many graphs and tables. One forgets that newspaper editors have space limitations for every page: there has to be a quarter page advertisement to earn money; there have to be photos to attract the readers’ attention; and then of course the text of your article.
In the old days when I have lazily given editors too much material, some editors have just thrown out tables or graphs which the reader will vainly then look for as they are referred to in the text.
Sometimes editors and subeditors have thrown out whole paragraphs and sections of your two page article.
I must acknowledge though that over the years most The Fiji Times editors and subeditors have been kind to me by printing all my text, sometime even leaving out advertisements.
Proof-read after a break: Eliminate personal references
When the article is on important issues, you must wait for a day or two before proof-reading re-read your article, preferably as hard copy or as a pdf file.
I have found that often I cannot pick up mistakes on the computer screen as I am writing. But the mistakes jump out from a pdf version or hard copy.
Clip 4 is on the absolute necessity to eliminate all personal references which belittle people and do not add to the arguments. Leave out all items and sections not important to your main argument in case it gets blown up totally unnecessarily.
For instance, an article pointing out the conflict of interests for the permanent secretary of Finance or the Governor of the Reserve Bank also chairing the FNPF and a commercial telecom company, must not personally attack the PS or Governor as a person. (That person is a leading politician today although in the shadows).
A terrible fault of mine (often pointed out by my wife) is that often I will slip in a “throw-away line” as a joke. But it arouses great annoyance to someone and takes attention away from my serious main arguments.
Once in a lecture/article on the benefits and costs of globalisation I pointed out that for the first time in our modern history, ordinary Fijian nurses and carpenters were able to travel to developed countries and earn good incomes.
In a “throw away” line I joked that NGO leaders and radical lefty academics who were the loudest in criticising globalisation were also keen beneficiaries of globalisation, travelling to conferences all over the world. Well did I cop it from my many NGO friends, totally detracting from my main arguments.
Remember that once published, even if on a newspaper, you are on record forever and cannot take back any hurtful words. Newspapers are now digitally archived globally for posterity.
But proof-reading and editing before you send the article to the editors can save you much angst later on.
Other clips worth watching
There are other clips on that post on my website which potential writers may find quite useful. Clip 6: Journalism should also be about good news Around the Pacific which the world’s media ignore in their search for “bad news”. Clip 8 talks about bad Journalism practices I have come across. Pacific Media discouragement of journalists (Clip 9); anti-intellectual bias of some media; universities totally undervaluing writings in the popular media compared to the credit they give for publications in academic journals (Clip 10); perennial themes for Pacific journalists (Clip 11 and Clip 12); missed opportunities by television media (Clip 13).
I should point out that my newspaper writing has profoundly improved my academic writing, whether academic articles, research reports, or books for international publishers (witness my book with Palgrave Macmillan, London).
Writers’ partnerships with editors
Budding writers today should not forget that they depend on editors and publishers who perform thankless tasks for relatively low incomes (compared to the writers’ normal incomes).
Writers should not forget the Bainimarama censorship years, when there was brutal persecution and prosecution of The Fiji Times publisher the late Hank Arts and Editor in Chief Fred Wesley, and the also the denial of government advertisements and revenue to The Fiji Times despite its wider circulation.
Budding writers of today (like Dr Sushil Sharma and Dr Subash Appana) need to remember that with a good partnership with editors, your articles will pile up week after week, month after month and year after year. You must to think about publications of books a few years down the line.
For example, my incredible partnership with The Fiji Times over 42 years (despite harsh censorship years between 2008 and 2014) resulted in more than six hundred articles, eventually converted into four community education books covering virtually all the economic, social, political and constitutional areas and debates over Fiji’s development.
Vol.1: The Challenges of Growing the Fiji Economy
Vol. 2 A Fair Go For All Fiji
Vol. 3 Our Struggles for Democracy in Fiji: Rule of Law and Media Freedom
Vol. 4 For a Decent Fiji.
The first editions are available as print books unfortunately nearly all loss-making. But revised editions are available as Amazon books and eventually I made them freely downloadable from my website NarseyOnFiji.
None of this output would have been possible without my incredible partnership with The Fiji Times (and its owners who were Motibhai Patel the last 20 years or so) and editors (like Fred Wesley) and sub-editors (like Sakiasi Waqavavalagi).
Budding writers must never forget those at the newspaper end who help your writing dreams come true, in return for making the newspaper more than just a “news”paper.
