‘Tis the season to be opinionated, folks!
You’re reading UF’s newspaper. It’s filled with photos, important news stories, not-so-important news stories and ballin’ reports on sports.
What fills pages six and seven? Opinions. A whole mess of opinions. This is the place where you can write to us to vent your frustrations or to praise your peers. You can read political disdain next to a religious point of view you might not have considered before.
Our columnists are all UF students who happen to be real people, just like you! You might have noticed that not all of them are journalism majors, nor do they have any prior column-writing training.
Half of you will take that into consideration and admire the pluck it takes to write a column each week while thinking to yourself, “Wow, I could never do that because they are much more brave than I.” Half of you will immediately say, “Yeah, I can tell they don’t have prior column-writing training because they suck worse than you do.”
Then we dare you to do better. We are incredibly proud of our columnists each semester, but there’s always room for more.
It doesn’t take much to be an opinions columnist, but it has turned into a fine art. You write 600 words a week. You form hard opinions on current events and present them with facts and evidence. You deal with criticism on the Internet because, well, that’s what people do on the Internet. You might not need a ton of experience to jump into this job, but you need a ton of tenacity.
Columnists are invited to reapply for their position after each semester, but we also opened application submission to everyone else.
Join us. It’s not scary, we promise. It’s like ripping off a Band-Aid. Send us a resume, cover letter and two or three writing samples of 500 to 600 words each.
If you’ve ever wished that your voice was better represented, or you want to try and add some spice to your resume, apply. If you want to better the world by writing about all the good things that go on in town, apply. If you are upset about the election results, whether the national election or on campus, apply.
Are you a feminist? Are you a humanist? Do your friends complain about how much you complain? Do you think the hipster voice is underrepresented and want to correct that? When was the last time you agreed with something in this paper?
Apply.
This is the most direct way to get your voice out. These pages are your haven, where you can be free to express your thoughts on nearly every subject under the sun. We feature writers from every walk of life, but only if they apply. Some readers emailed us asking why certain columnists were allowed to speak their minds in these pages. It’s because they applied to do it, so stop complaining if you don’t like it.
It’s kind of like those annoying people who say you can’t complain about an election unless you vote, except more fun.
The deadline for applications is Friday.
