Editorial, Column & Review Writing Training

About this Lesson

Laura Johnston
Associate Professor,
Print and Digital Journalism,
Missouri School of Journalism,
University of Missouri

The media often does more than report the news. It is not uncommon to find an editorial, column or review – all written to provide a point of view not traditionally found in news coverage.

What you will learn

After completing this unit, you should be able to:

Distinguish between the styles of opinion and news writing
Understand the distinction between an editorial or column and a letter to the editor
Recognize the decision making process of editorial writing
Identify different writing styles between editorials, columns, and reviews

How the lesson works

First of all, this is an asynchronous lesson unit, which means no live events are scheduled for this lesson. You can complete learning activities at your own pace whenever is convenient for you. Despite the asynchronous nature, the learning tasks are organized to help you succeed.

To be successful in this unit, please complete the following tasks:

• Watch the lecture.
• Take the quiz to test your own understanding. This will help you to strengthen the concepts you just learned.
• Optional: Due to the amount of content to be covered in a single unit, we encourage you read these additional resources. Some of the quiz questions might come from the readings in Additional Resources section.