March 9: Public Lecture: Media Pluralism: Threats and Risks
5 March 2010
About the Muse Magazine Critic-in-Residence Programme
10 March 2010

The Art of the Opinion Editor: How to Write Commentary

This intensive course in writing opinion pieces, editorials, and commentary will enable you to communicate complex ideas to a broader audience.

• If you have ideas that you wish to share with an audience, this course will enable you to put them into writing in ways that will make them comprehensible and appealing to both editors and readers, online as well as in print.

• You will learn how to express complex content in language that is vivid, active, and concrete.

• You will learn to understand what editors are after when they commission opinion pieces from experts in a particular field. And you will learn what makes effective commentary stick in readers’ minds.

• You will learn the art of the “pitch” – how to awaken an editor’s interest when proposing a story.

•Each participant will write one article that will be subjected to in-class discussion and detailed review by the instructor .

Who will benefit?
Business people, professionals, or public policy experts who aim to disseminate their ideas through publication.

Course Fee:                        $3,500
Date:                                     April 10, 17, 24 and May 8, 2010 (Saturdays)
Time:                                    10 am – 1 pm
Venue:                                  Digital Media Lab, Eliot Hall, HKU (see map)
Maximum class size:      15
Instructor:                         Christian Caryl, Muse Magazine Critic-in-Residence, JMSC.

Christian Caryl is a contributing editor at Foreign Policy, where he writes the Reality Check column, at Newsweek, and is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books.

To learn more about the Muse Magazine Critic-in-Residence program and Christian Caryl’s bio, please click here.

Download the registration form here.

For further information, please contact Kylie Chan by e-mail at kyliec@hku.hk or telephone 2219-4416