I'll be sharing this with my twitter followers.
As a web manager, this is something I struggle with at my company on a regular basis. It's great to have a stance and all, but then you're just a talking head and nothing more. There needs to be a little soul behind what you're saying.
Offer solutions, not problems.
The other thing I'd add is that fluff is something I've personally struggled with when I write something. I often go back to Edgar Allan Poe's guidelines for writing short stories:
In the whole composition there should be no word written, of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is not to the one pre-established design.
Agreed. The art of writing good opinion pieces is the lay out the arguments sequentially so that the reader is led to the conclusion by himself; such that when you state your opinion he's already come to that point of view. It's time-consuming and requires restraint, but it's very effective.