Whether we call them personal commentaries or informal essays, they tend to feature first person POV. Something needs to be the exigence, or prime motivation, for the commentary, and that should be both timely and accessible to readers.
In the case of the controversial Regis commentary, the article MIGHT have been in response to the writer thinking about recent court hearings regarding abortion, though that was not clear in the actual piece.
On the other hand, there has been no change in Catholic teaching about abortion and readers were not given any new insights into the issue. The writer wanted to make a persuasive argument and perhaps change some opinions and practices surrounding the abortion issue. I would suggest that this issue is now long past logic and factual reporting -- and that the young writer had taken on an impossible task.
What MIGHT have been possible is to share a personal story, perhaps based on the woman the writer knew who (maybe?) had an abortion prior to later having two children. Sharing that woman's story in a sensitive and compelling way might have helped any reader see that the issue is deeply personal and quite complex.
But the actual article mentions this option only in passing and incompletely before heading into a series of unsupported, uncited statistics and vague arguments.
The writer and her advisers would have been wise to continue talking about options prior to publishing, and that would be true whether any controversy arose. We read commentaries and columns (the difference simply being that columns are regularly appearing commentaries, with the writers establishing an ongoing relationship to readers) to find new insights and new emotions and new people.
Readers tend to enjoy reading about people very unlike themselves, as well as about people very like themselves, but with hidden depths and anecdotes and emotions.
An informal essay is nearly as much about the author as the audience and such articles often allow for more "voice" from the writer than the standard news story. The personality, the diction, and the unique perspectives of the writer provide much of the energy for the writing.
A formal essay (in journalism, these are staff editorials) relies more on ideas and logic and careful support for claims. Editorials tend to build to some sort of Call to Action. We want readers to do something or think differently.
An informal essay might also include a Call to Action, but a CTA is not required.
A final thought: writers must always keep their audiences firmly in mind. For student journalists, they must move past the idea of their classroom teacher being the prime audience. In the Regis Jesuit case, there were at least four distinct audiences. Writers may not be able to serve them all equally, but we should at least be aware.
Those audiences were Regis students, Regis faculty and staff, Regis parents, and (crucially) Denver Archdiocese officials.
For media advisers, one job is to keep reminding passionate and (maybe) naïve students to at least think about how all potential audiences might respond to a particular argument.
Students see things more narrowly. Advisers need to see the bigger picture.
Strong thinking and strong reporting rarely gets writers (or advisers) into trouble, and perhaps that is the final takeaway from this unfortunate mess.
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