A.4. Reaching Your Intended Audience

Writing Op-Eds, by Victor Tan Chen

Many sociologists think our work would be helpful for policymakers and the broader public to understand, but we struggle to get our views heard outside a small circle of fellow researchers. While we’re waiting for a CNN or New York Times reporter to stumble across our research and call us, we can also consider writing nonacademic pieces that make the findings of our research accessible to ordinary readers.

It’s important to emphasize that writing for public consumption is very different from the writing you do for an academic paper. You should generally think of them as separate projects, because the language you use in one will be very different from what you use in another. In fact, even if you haven’t done empirical research on a particular topic, you might find news outlets willing to publish your writing so long as you have an interesting take on the research that other people have done. As we described in Chapter 2: Using Sociology in Everyday Life, students who are seeking out careers outside academia can find success as journalists or public relations staff who translate research for nonacademic audiences in this way.

The sorts of essays that academics typically write for news publications are opinion or commentary pieces called op-eds (which stands for “opposite the editorial page,” referring to where these guest essays were traditionally placed in a newspaper). Generally, op-eds have a clear argument that can be summarized in a thesis statement of one or a couple sentences—which means that the version of a particularly complex piece of research for public consumption will often need to be broken up into multiple op-eds. You should be aware that it is okay to include your personal perspective in an op-ed. Most publications prefer that you use first-person voice, for example, and connecting your research to your own life can be engaging for readers. In fact, in addition to traditional op-eds, publications often accept articles that are entirely personal essays but connected to a news topic.

For better or worse, many prominent publications want a strong opinion expressed in an op-ed. In other words, they want you to have a forceful, provocative argument—one that doesn’t dance around with all the nuances and contradictions of your findings, but clearly states the driving point and its broader implications. (As an editor once told me, an op-ed is a “made-up mind.”) It is a judgment call you will need to make, whether you are comfortable with presenting your research in this way, and we would strongly advise against twisting your research findings to fit a particularly compelling narrative. That said, there is always a certain degree of simplification that has to go into presenting your work to a nonspecialist audience, and it is a helpful exercise to learn how to boil down your findings into a concise, powerful argument.

Identifying publications to query. Which publication should you try to write for? You can pitch almost any publication, but you will want to consider its readership and whether that’s the sort of audience you want to reach. Unless you’re an astounding writer or have a research finding that blows people away, you probably don’t want to bother with the largest and most prestigious publications; they tend to look dimly upon newbie researchers without an established track record. You also should note that publishing with highly political outlets may (rightly or wrongly) associate you with their ideologies and partisan leanings, meaning other scholars may look at you and your work differently. In general, it’s a good idea to query publications that you personally enjoy reading, which means your voice or interests as a writer will probably match their own. For folks new to op-ed writing, smaller publications may be a good place to get constructive (or any) feedback on your writing style, since their editors are not so deluged with pitches; for instance, since 2001 I’ve worked on In The Fray, an online magazine devoted to personal stories on global issues, where I’ve mentored young writers who are just learning the craft.

Querying publications. How should you go about reaching out to (“querying” or “pitching”) publications? First, you should get to know the publication you wish to target by reading through past articles they’ve written on your topic. On the one hand, if the subject of your piece is too far astray from the sorts of articles that the publication typically publishes—in terms of either the substance or the style of your writing—the editors may reject your submission right off the bat. On the other hand, if your op-ed is too similar to what they’ve recently published, you might be rejected for that reason, too. If you think the publication is a good fit, then read their submission guidelines carefully. Every publication has such guidelines for freelancers (writers who aren’t staff), though you may have to do some digging online to find them.

The submission guidelines will tell you whom to contact about your article, what to say in your submission, and when (if ever) to expect a reply. Sometimes, editors will only accept a full draft of an op-ed in your pitch. Newspaper opinion pages like those for the New York Times and Washington Post often do this. Many other publications, however, prefer that you send them just a pitch—a brief description of what you propose to write about—rather than a completed draft. As noted in the Guardian’s submission guidelines, editors at some publications don’t have time to read full drafts and would rather work with you from the get-go to make sure your piece meets their expectations.

Writing a pitch. The pitch should be no more than a paragraph long—several sentences that concisely summarize what you want to argue, perhaps with one or two one or two examples or pieces of evidence to support your claims (with links to back you up). Providing a news “peg” or news “hook”—a description of how your article is related to hot topics currently in the news—can be helpful, too, but as Slate notes in their submission guidelines: “Avoid vague, one- or two-sentence pitches on a topic, as in, ‘I would like to write about X because of Y news peg.’ A short paragraph that captures your argument will be more effective.” Tailor the focus of your piece to the publication’s audience, if possible; if it is a national publication, you don’t want to focus too much on local issues unless you can make a strong case they have national significance.

Regardless of whether you are including a full draft in your submission, it’s important to have a provocative and tightly written pitch paragraph in the email you send to editors. Otherwise, they may not bother to read your full draft. Likewise, when you send your query (which is typically done by email), the subject line should not be a generic subject (e.g., “Op-Ed Submission”), but should describe your thesis succinctly (like a headline would) or at least mention the specific topic. Along with your pitch paragraph, include a line or two about who you are and your qualifications for writing this piece; you might want to include links to past pieces you’ve written if they’re particularly notable and they’re also similar to what the publication publishes. If you’re including a full draft of your op-ed, you can usually just paste it into the text of the email rather than including an attachment; check the publication’s guidelines.

Don’t query more than one publication at a time. As with academic journals, wait until the publication rejects your piece (see below) before moving on to another publication.

Writing the op-ed. The most important rule in writing a nonacademic essay is to avoid jargon. Obviously, this includes social-scientific terminology, but also consider that for more mainstream publications, you will want to avoid any language or phrasings that are used largely in the academy and not widely adopted elsewhere. For publications geared to broad audiences, think about what a parent, grandparent, aunt/uncle, sibling, etc., would be able to relate to. (My own pet peeve is the constant use of partially parenthetical terms by academics—“on (hu)man bondage” and its ilk—which no one outside the academy seems to find as witty.) I would also recommend taking it easy on the use of acronyms, which social scientists tend to adore. Too much use of them can turn the text into an alphabet soup and make your readers’ eyes glaze over. On second reference, you might choose to refer to something by part of its name or by another descriptor rather than using an acronym. For example, refer to “the university” rather than “VCU,” and refer to “this theory” rather than “RIT” (for “relational inequality theory”) or “WST” (for “world-systems theory”) or whatever arbitrary agglomeration of letters you use for your pet theory.

Especially for an op-ed, the first paragraph (the “lede” or “lead”) is typically a brief statement of your thesis. If not, there should be a paragraph near the top of the piece that briefly summarizes your argument and/or describes why a reader should care about it (what’s sometimes called a “nutgraf,” since it says why your piece matters in a nutshell). Generally, op-ed pieces should be between 500 and 1,000 words (check the publication’s website, though). This means you need to keep your take on the research short and sweet. You can include some empirical data as vignettes or statistics, but don’t overdo it. For statistics, you will just want to flag the most pertinent numbers, and then more generally describe any relevant trends or patterns in the data. For qualitative data, you typically want to provide quotes from a single respondent or observations from a single event to illustrate a single point, with the expectation that additional data exists to back you up. For the most part, use shorter quotes from interviews, and include a brief description of the speaker (typically, noting their age, gender, race, and where they live). Publications have their own rules about whether pseudonyms should be used (or if unnamed respondents are even allowed); check with an editor.

Unlike for academic papers, the rules for sourcing your information in an op-ed are looser. Don’t include academic-style citations (last name and page numbers, etc.), but do reference any person you quote, or the source of important information, in your article’s prose (“According to so-and-so …”). Mentioning lots of academics or a lot of studies will make your piece sound too academic, so if you’re writing an online piece, you might want to instead link to that research rather than mentioning it in the text.

Note that you do not control the headline of your piece, which is often written by editors after you sign off on your draft. Furthermore, you normally will need to defer to the editor about the final version of the piece, including changes to specific phrasings within it—what are known as line edits. (Nonacademic editors typically exert much more control over your writing than academic editors do.) That said, don’t be afraid to stand up for yourself on important points. At the end of the day, you want to publish a piece that accurately represents your research.

Following up. After you send your query, you will need to wait patiently for a reply. Publications often list the expected wait time in their submissions guidelines; typically, it is one or two weeks. If you don’t hear back after a week (or whatever time they specify in their guidelines), you can send one follow-up email, but don’t pursue it beyond that, and don’t call them. Once the expected wait time passes, you can move on to pitch your piece to another publication.

Larger publications often pay their writers, though the amounts are usually quite small for op-eds. Importantly, op-eds are written “on spec,” meaning that they can be rejected at any time, and there is no guarantee of payment until the piece is published. You will have to decide whether the lack of pay justifies all the work you put into crafting an op-ed. That said, there is a great deal of satisfaction in bringing sociological ideas to the broader public. At the very least, you will finally be able to explain to your friends and family what it is you do exactly.