Today I've published for the first time an opinion article in a national (Dutch) newspaper, NRC-next. This was quite an interesting experience, as I've learnt a lot about writing for news media along the way. Here’s a scan.

The piece is about the upcoming telecom law reform in the European Union, and how this relates to network neutrality. The European Parliament will vote on the new law package next Tuesday. There were about two weeks in between my initial submittal and the actual publications, in which a lot of revisions were made. I worked with a great editor, who helped me a good deal in making my piece more accessible for the general public.

Here's what I've learnt: writing for news media is very different from academic writing. I was so naive as to expect that what I sent in originally was good to go and could be printed right away. Boy, was I wrong. It turned out to be very hard to explain my ideas to the imagined reader, who would be educated but of course lacks background knowledge on European telecom policy. In the end, it was a very healthy experience to strip my research down, and explain what it's all about in the simplest terms. In fact, I can highly recommend it to any academic.

Since what we academics do in the end should be for the greater good of society, writing for news media is a great exercise in telling the world why your research is relevant. Which can be really hard, it turns out. The downside is that you loose nuance, and end up polarizing more than you would have in an scholarly article or essay. But again, writing for news media is a different ball game. I'm really curious to see if my article provokes any reactions.