Opinion article is an expression of your attitude as a writer. These remarks were made by Yos Rizal Suriaji, Managing Editor of Opinion, Science and Sport Desk of Tempo in the Training for the Writers of Opinion Article held by the Regional Autonomy Implementation Monitoring Committee (KPPOD) on 6 April 2015 in Jakarta. The training was attended by 7 staff researchers of KPPOD and 3 participants from the Indonesian Employers Association (APINDO) who is also concerned about the issue of regional autonomy. APINDO participated in this training because they considered skills in popular writing importance for its work.
As part of capacity building program of the organization, the training aims to improve the quality of writing of the researchers. "Since we took part in the training on popular writing organized by Knowledge Sector Initiative last year, we began to realize that the results of our research is not yet widely known by the general public" said Ig. Sigit Murwito, Deputy Executive Director of KPPOD. "There is a difference between the skills of researchers who are used to write research reports and popular writing. We want all writers in the KPPOD to be able to write popular writing so that people can easily digest writings from KPPOD" he added.
The enthusiasm of participants with research background is strongly felt and a small number of participants make the discussion became more focused and dynamic. The question from the participants is how to condense a large amount of information of the research results into a short and clear opinion article. "Before the training I used to write in an inverted pyramid model that begins with the background of the problem and end with the conclusion" said Tities Eka Agustine, a researcher at KPPOD. "But now the idea is different. The structure of opinion writing is the idea which is revealed in the first paragraph and supported with arguments in each analysis," Tities said further. Yos Rizal added that the framework of opinion writing is like an hourglass where important information is put at the beginning and end of the article.
As a follow-up of the training each participant is required to write an article whose content will be disassembled and analyzed so that it is considered worthy for publication in the media. As a mentor Yos Rizal will provide time for online mentoring as well as direct assistance to the KPPOD office. Advanced training will be held again at the end of April 2015.
