Birat Anupam- 

I have some friends who often appear on the opinion pages of vernacular national dailies with writings on varied topics. My memory is filled with the days when I would go through all the articles and befriend the writers one after another. 

I was habituated to this phenomenon till I got my first opinion piece published in an English language mainstream daily. My only objective in developing intimacy with them was to get issues and ideas in order to write my article. These days, I am not engaged in search operations for articles on social media or mailing platforms.  

It is not an easy task to get published on mainstream opinion pages. Plus, first-timers have to think multiple times before getting their articles published. Generally, national papers seek expert opinions from established and well-known figures and personalities in the related field. The mass media wants medical pieces from clinical researchers, political articles from prominent politicians and professors of the same stream, social and ethnic columns from sociologists and anthropologists, and the list goes on and on. In such a scenario, it is very hard to make it into the opinion section of premier papers. Beginners will be familiar with the way I used to act in my early days of writing opinion articles. That is why I term those who are vying for and occasionally publishing their articles in mainstream papers where they do not have close connections with the editorial board or the op-ed editors as competitive columnists.

Yes, they, like me, are competitive columnists. They are not sure of the fixed day when their article might be published. They end up waiting days, if not weeks, for their pieces to be printed. One has to think from multiple angles about the delays and supposed cancellations of the articles and have to write potentially publishable articles. Numerous topics dance in their brains when beginners and first-timers do not get published. This gives them trouble while, on the other hand, it broadens their thinking and knowledge base as one has to think about many dimensions of the topic to grab the attention of the op-ed gatekeeper.

One of my friends has a personal visiting card on which he has stated his professional info and described himself as a newspaper columnist for a number of national papers. I asked him if I too was qualified to call myself a columnist. He did not say no. I thought that those publishing writings in national papers are opinion makers not columnists. To be a newspaper columnist, the newsroom or editorial team must look for distinguished persons with outstanding and in-depth reading, research and resources on the topic he or she writes on. This way, my friend was convinced to be termed a competitive columnist instead since we have to compete with opinion makers for the same space or column sans personal links with the editors.