Referring to yourself in an op/ed piece?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Colten S
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Colten S

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Where I go to school, we are required to pass a senior project to graduate. I chose to do mine on journalism. For part of my project, I must write an op/ed piece and submit it to the local newspaper for possible publication. Now, on a news piece that I wrote, my mentor told me not to use words like "I" or "me" in a news piece. I was wondering, does the same rule apply to op/ed pieces?
 
It's not exactly a rule but it is considered bad form to refer to yourself even in a feature, unless you're a columnist writing specifically about your own life. There are lots of ways of getting around using the first person - instead of "I think it's true that ...", try "it is often claimed that ..." or "it's generally believed that ..." and so on.
 
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