Fix things Friday

[luzula]

Well hey, skygiants had this idea that every week you could write down the activism/volunteer stuff that you are doing, be it small or large. I'm not sure I'll be making a post on it every week, but I thought I'd try it once, anyway--it is a bit satisfying to see it written down like this.

So, this week I have:
- Attended a members' meeting of my union.
- Attended a lecture on syndicalism, not mainly to listen to it, but to help recruit interested people to the union. Recruited three people.
- Donated to the strike fund of the CSAAWU union in South Africa (their winery workers' strike has gotten attention in Sweden due to solidarity actions from unions in the Swedish state-monopoly alcohol stores).
- Donated to a local organization helping women who are forced into selling sex.
- Submitted critical comments about the environmental aspects of a government report on forestry stuff (this was a 12-page document which I drafted together with two other people; it took weeks).
- Finished the draft of a debate article on the same, which was published on a news site.
- Gave beta feedback on a debate article someone else wrote (a reply to some forest industry propaganda).
- Submitted a grant proposal to get funding for doing inventories of threatened Swedish old-growth forests (I did not write the project description/budget, but I did the various administrative stuff around it).

BTW, what is the English word for when a newspaper publishes your text which argues for a certain position? We call that "debattartikel" which is why I translated it into "debate article" above, but what's it actually called?

Comments

[luzula]

Isn't that written by the editor (or other person at the newspaper) to reflect the paper's position, though? Or can it be written by anyone, and reflect any opinion (well, anything within accepted public discourse)?

[the_rck]

An editorial is written by some member of the newspaper staff or by an invited guest writer, basically someone being paid for the writing. Some editorial pages feature articles from people who disagree, either substantially or in details.

Anything not paid is a 'letter to the editor.'

[luzula]

Ah, okay. Maybe Swedish newspaper traditions are slightly different, then. We definitely have editorials as well, and we also have short pieces that anyone can send in, which are probably like what you call "letters to the editor". But all newspapers also contain longer, argumentative pieces often written by NGOs, politicians, industry leaders, etc. You just send them in and the newspaper can publish or reject them, but you don't get paid.

Other suggestions I've gotten is "opinion piece" and "op-ed".

[calvinahobbes]

A letter to the editor is also argumentative, but based on your description here, op-ed is probably the best description. I never liked that word; it seems so specific and yet non-descriptive.