If you want to be a Supreme Court justice, you have to produce legal opinions. If you want to be a fashion designer, you've got to create new dresses or new clothing. Well, if you want to be a pundit, you have to create opinions on a lot of them. They don't have to be books. They don't have to be 20 page white papers. They can be just sound bites.
But you need to have opinions on issues that relate to your area of expertise. And if you're a generalist news pundit, you need to have a lot of opinions. The most important thing about your opinions for television is that they are interesting and provocative. They don't necessarily have to be correct or verifiable. I'm passing no judgment here. And you may pass judgment on me for making that statement, but it is a simple truth.
You don't always have to be accurate. You're not judged by your forecasting abilities most of the time. In fact, Dick Morris, formerly Fox News Channel is the pretty much the only pundit I've ever heard of who's gotten canned for bad predictions. And that was after decades of phenomenally awful, awful predictions that never turned out to be true. Only then was he finally swept off the stage in 2012. But you can still see dick Moore's pop up all over the place.
It's not like he is disappeared completely. You need to have opinions. And as long as your opinion, is it, I don't know, or I've never thought about that my opponent has a good opinion there. I mean, those two opinions are not going to serve you well, in the punditry business. People can say they want that they could say, Gosh, wouldn't it be refreshing if a pundits I don't know? I never thought of that.
The reality is, you probably wouldn't be invited back. You're there to get opinions, interesting opinions. Lots of opinions, opinions, ideally that aren't just the talking points that have already been discussed and be put out by major political parties. Although there are exceptions to that a case can be made that, for example, Sean Hannity, who is often the second most successful pundit and talk show host and all cable news, really does give opinions that seem as though they're right off press releases during the Republican Party. Now, folks, I'm not being partisan here. Rush Limbaugh is someone who is a hero to Republicans and conservatives.
And I would argue if you listen to his show, he still comes up with wildly inventive, creative and funny perspectives that really do not sound as if they are off of the Republican Party talking point or press release. So most of the time, you're going to be more successful as a pundit if your ideas are seen as fresh Original, creative, you may lead people to the same conclusion than the others do. But if you can come up with interesting opinions and novel take an interesting perspective. On the top story, the news that is going to be highly valuable. The other huge asset of abundant is the ability to take a lot of different factors going on to quickly synthesize it to be able to summarize what's truly important. And then give analysis.
So that is a skill that you need to have. So here's what I want you to do. Look in the news right now, finding three topics that you want to comment on and write down three sentences, three to four sentences on each one. That show analysis. That's not just a summary of it, but analysis, an actual opinion about what's right or wrong, what could be or should be on this topic. That's your homework.