If you had the choice between letting your opinion get vetted by a number of editors, fact-checked and copy-edited, or just posting your unedited thoughts on social media, you may go for the easier and quicker choice.

If an opinion was so bad, it would get filtered out, right?

This is not always the case. Anytime you have a thought, a take, or want to share something going on in your head to a large audience, social media would be the first choice for most people on our campus. You can create an audience just by what you say or do, and the internet proves almost every day that anybody can become viral in an instant.

Audience sizes may vary based on where you post, how many followers you have on the respective social media platform of your choice, or even what you type out. After all, your opinion could either be ballooned to the top of everybody’s feed because of what you’re talking about, or nobody would see it because you’re shadow banned.

This may still sound easier than writing in the opinion section of a newspaper, but why are both important and not just one?

Keep this in mind; it’s one thing to say that a post on your Twitter account did well or got a lot of likes. That may be nice in the moment, but social media moves fast – your post will get forgotten in less than a month. So will your account name, and anything else you do on the platform. Think of it like a ‘one hit wonder,’ except this time it’s over thoughts, not songs.

The same is not always true when you write for an opinions section – including at The Globe.

No matter how simple or complex your subject at hand is, writing in this section provides you with something tangible to look at, and you wrote it. Sure, you could always print an essay about why you’re fantastic and deserve every good thing to ever exist on A4 paper, but not everybody has a newspaper printing facility in their house (or backyard).

Your opinions, or experiences, can get your name out there, or put your foot in the door, for others to appreciate in a professional setting. Whether you’re a journalism student who wants to find a way to get involved or a musical theater major who wants to describe shows that Point Park should try to produce, we all have this easy access writing section that will get eyes on whatever you may want to say.

But  shared social media space will not get people on your side or motivate them to listen to you. Even besides that, writing in our opinions section gets eyes outside of Point Park on anything you would want to say – after and if it is approved and copy-edited by The Globe’s editorial staff.

So, if you want to start writing on a level that is higher than long-winded rants on social media, this is your space to do so. Without the opinion section, students would no longer have a space to voice their concerns or positive attitudes in the paper unless they were getting quoted for an interview.

If journalism is what you want to do, or you want to take on writing even if you’re not a journalism major, then maybe your many thoughts and experiences during the semester could move you higher up in the world of the Globe’s editorial staff. As such, this has happened with other editors in the past, so what is stopping you from being next?