Screw Your Opinions, Give Us Your Analysis

Writers need to get rid of a very bad habit

If The New York Times hired you tomorrow as a reporter, the work would probably be much duller than you’d hope. You’d be given a beat. You’d be given a few contacts. You’d be told to collect the facts.

Probably you would be assigned a small neighborhood and follow the police around. You’d write about petty crimes. You’d agonize over getting small details right, no matter how insignificant the story seemed.

This is news reporting at its finest.

No matter how many people (or presidents) try to discredit the profession, journalism is incredibly important for keeping society informed. Simply doing away with the “liberal media” or “conservative outlets” is an excellent path to fascism.

However, as meaningful as news is, the other type of writing — analysis — is also very important. You can’t have content without context. News writing tells you the past while analysis shows you glimpses into a possible future.

Tiger Woods won his 15th major championship in 2019. Donald Trump has tweeted 12 times today. The temperature is 98 degrees. The facts have no meaning without analysis. How many tournaments does the average golfer win? (0.) How often do world leaders normally tweet in a day? (Maybe twice.) Why does the temperature matter? (If it’s hotter than ever, it might matter a lot.)

Every human being is an analyst. We take in facts, we analyze them. That is how the brain works. It is a marvelous and beautiful thing.

Sadly, most of the media we consume today is neither analysis, news, nor facts. It’s simply an opinion.

Opinions are flimsy. They can be hastily formed and riddled with errors of thinking. They are largely subjective and may or may not be true. However, their simplicity makes them attractive.

• “Fossil fuels should be eliminated tomorrow!”
• “All liberals are stupid!”
• “Cheez-Its are better than Cheese Nips!”

(That last one is a fact, not an opinion, but you see what I mean.)

Why does it matter that humans today are only consuming opinions? Because unlike generations past, we are now building our entire belief system on opinions, not analysis. A scandalous headline changes how we feel about a person, place, or political party. We then pass this belief off as absolute truth because “we read an article about it,” despite never reading a single word after the headline.

This isn’t just young people. It’s anyone with a screen. You’ve likely had an experience in the last few years of assuming you knew a person only to discover later that their mind has been warped by the parade of opinions, hatred, and faulty logic they’ve swiped through for days.

What is the source of the problem? Where do these opinions come from? They come from writers with a wobbly moral compass and an unwavering goal to collect as many pageviews as possible. Facts? Who cares about facts? Research? That’s unnecessary.

All writers are guilty of this from time to time, including me. Since it’s easy (and popular) to have opinions, most of us have built a career on them.

“These three books will change your life!” you say, knowing full well the books in question just happen to be the first three books you saw on the shelf. You don’t give credit. You don’t provide links. You don’t try to disprove your own opinion. You don’t stop to wonder if you are telling the whole story. You press publish and move on. After all, you need to generate more “content” if you want to get paid.

This is dangerous. It’s part of what has caused the enormous divide between classes, races, and political parties. Opinions are flimsy, but a flood of them can crush the most reasonable person.

Luckily for you as a writer and for humanity in general, there is an easy solution.

Don’t share opinions. Share analysis.

Analysis is much less complicated than it sounds. An analysis is an opinion with research. If the research does not match your opinion, change your opinion. Your brain doesn’t want to do this. Your brain wants to find the first article in Harvard Business Review that leans toward your opinion so that you can go eat lunch.

Fight that urge.

A writer can build a smarter, more thoughtful society. But it will never happen if that writer is churning out stupid content, endlessly, to try and make a check.

You can be better. You can be smarter. You can rise above. Believe me when I say the whole of humanity needs more writers who refuse to shoot from the hip. We need people who seek, find, and tell the truth. Today, choose to be that writer.

Screw your rash opinions. Give us your deep analysis. The world needs it now more than ever.