On Tuesday Trish Hall, the Op-Ed editor for the New York Times, paid a visit to the School of Journalism here at Berkeley. She is a UC Berkeley alumnus and she used to write for the Daily Californian. Hall actually realized, as she was talking, that a number of the people she works with at the Times are associated with Berkeley.
The setup of the talk was a forum in which Hall left it open for the audience to ask questions and she would answer. She described any form of writing as biased because of the ways in which information is gathered and the decision is made to choose certain stories over others, but it is important to keep traditional and opinion pieces separate. Hall finds it very important that her team work collectively as a group in order to get pieces published in print or online because the process is very time intensive. She apologetically mentioned that some opinion pieces are not responded to for 1-2 years. When the editorial is appropriate, she and her team will run it.
Engagement with the material in the form of comments and shares online are very important because the impact of the editorial is directly shown. Hall provided insight on new developments that were occurring in the opinion pieces. There is now a way in which videos and documentaries are shown through UpDocs which are 5 to 30 minute videos of opinion pieces. She was very excited to state that UpDocs was Emmy nominated this year. She also mentioned the various growth and importance of foreign editorials and facilities. Overall the talk was inspiring and very informative.