Writing and placing an opinion piece

Comment pages are largely commissioned, and the unsolicited inbox is a secondary supply. Knowing that is what stops you sending your best work to the one place least likely to run it.

Nobody commissions you and nobody has to. Comment desks do read unsolicited work, the address is findable, and you can send a finished piece this week without anybody’s permission.

Before you write a word. A signed piece is permanent and searchable. There is a section below on what that costs, and it is worth reading before you start.

The part that usually goes unsaid

An editor decides on Monday what runs on Wednesday, then approaches somebody they have used before. At a national title an unknown name is a long shot. That is a reason to aim correctly, not a reason to stop.

Your real chances sit at local papers, trade and professional publications, student newspapers, community and faith titles, and specialist sites. They commission far less, run on small budgets and are often short of copy. Aim there deliberately rather than as a consolation. A piece that ran somewhere small is what makes a larger desk open your next email.

Why this person, why now

Every commissioning editor asks one thing first, and it is not whether your argument is correct. It is why you, and why this week.

A piece anybody could have written is refused however well it is written. A hundred people can state the general case. What a desk cannot get elsewhere is what you saw, what you do, and what it costs you to say it.

First-time writers bury exactly that. They open with context, place themselves in paragraph seven, and cut the personal detail as not relevant.

Standing does not mean a title. Sixteen years teaching in the same department is standing. So is running the shop opposite the wall the graffiti went on.

Weak: The rise in antisemitic incidents on campus is a matter of serious concern across the sector.

Strong: I have taught in this department for sixteen years. Last term a student asked me to move a seminar because they were frightened to cross the square.

The rule underneath: your opening sentence carries a person, doing something, in a place, at a time.

If you cannot answer why you and why now, the form is wrong rather than the writer. A reaction to something published, with no standing behind it, is a letter. Letters have their own guide: writing a letter that gets printed.

What a byline costs

Read this before you send anything.

A signed piece is permanent. It sits under your name in search results, and it gets quoted back out of context years later by people who dislike it. If you lean on your professional standing, readers connect the piece to your employer.

Note the tension. Writing from your own standing is the advice on this page, and it is also what makes you findable.

Some of that is manageable. You may want to consider telling your employer before publication rather than after, and tightening your own accounts the day before.

Some of it is not. What you can safely write about a named living person differs by country, including on defamation, and this page states no country’s law. If your draft names or clearly identifies somebody, check locally first. The kind of body that knows is a media law clinic, a journalists’ union, or a civil liberties organisation that advises on publication. Write down who told you, what they said, and when.

This is your call and not ours. What is not reasonable is discovering what a byline means the week after it publishes.

The news peg

Comment attaches to something that happened. A vote, a ruling, a report published, an incident, an anniversary with a number on it. No peg, no piece.

The peg goes in the first two sentences, with its date, so an editor sees where the article sits in this week. Pegged to something three weeks old, a piece reads as an essay out of a drawer.

The peg also sets your clock. For a daily the window is a day or two. For a weekly or a monthly it is longer.

One argument, stated at the top

This is the structural difference from an essay, and where academic and professional writers most often fail.

An essay builds. It lays out the competing accounts, weighs them and arrives somewhere in the last paragraph. An opinion piece runs the other way. You state the argument in the first two sentences and spend the rest earning it.

One argument, not a theme with four supporting movements. If you cannot say it in one sentence with no “and” in it, the piece is not ready to write.

How long, which is shorter than you think

Most comment slots run 700 to 900 words. Some sites run 600. A first piece of 1,200 words is a piece that has not been cut yet.

Count the words in three pieces they ran last week, and write to that number.

A piece over length is rarely refused for it. It gets cut by somebody who does not know which paragraph you cared about, and the cut version carries your name.

Pitching

Find the person who handles comment, not the newsdesk. Look at the foot of published comment pieces, at the contact page, or at the masthead. Where only a generic address exists, address it to the comment editor.

If nobody has heard of you, send the finished article. This is the reverse of the advice given to established writers, who pitch an idea and are commissioned on their name. An editor with no knowledge of you cannot judge whether you can write until they see 800 words of it.

The email is short. A subject line stating your argument rather than your topic. Three or four sentences carrying the peg, the argument and who you are.

Subject: The new reporting line will not reach the people it was built for

Dear comment editor,

Tuesday’s report covered the local authority’s new reporting line for racist and antisemitic incidents, which opens on 12 August.

I have run the shop opposite the community centre for nineteen years. I reported three incidents last year, twice by phone and once in person, and nobody came back to me on any of them. My argument is that a new number changes nothing while the follow-up is still missing.

The piece is 840 words and written. It is pasted below and attached. It is not with anybody else.

Daniel Okonjo, Riverside. My mobile is at the foot of the attached piece.

That is 117 words. No summary of the general situation, no curriculum vitae, and no request for a call.

Exclusivity

You cannot offer the same piece to two publications at once. This is not etiquette. An editor who works on a piece and then sees it appear elsewhere will not read you again.

Send to one. Wait three to five working days for a daily, about a week for a weekly. Then send one two-line note asking whether it is of interest. If nothing comes back, treat it as free and send it on.

Posting the piece on your own site, or as a long thread, counts as publication for many desks.

After they say yes

They will edit it, sometimes until a paragraph you cared about has gone. Where you are sent a proof, spend your energy on facts and quotations rather than on sentence rhythm.

They will write the headline, and you will not like it. Headlines are written by somebody else, to be read on a phone, and they run sharper than the piece beneath them.

The headline is what people react to, and many will react to nothing else. Decide in advance that you will not spend publication day disowning it underneath your own piece.

If nobody takes it

Most unsolicited pitches are refused, and most refusals arrive as silence. Three refusals on one piece is an ordinary week rather than a verdict on the writing.

The work survives. The same argument becomes a 200-word letter, a post under your own name, or a submission to a smaller title.

Keep every draft in one folder. The people who appear on comment pages are the ones still sending after the fourth refusal.

Aim it before you write it

Fill in the blanks152 words

Two questions from memory. Which title are you actually sending this to, and why that one rather than the biggest one you can think of? And what is the argument in one sentence, the one the editor will decide on?

Then write the cue, not the intention. “When I feel ready” is not a cue.

Action. If the report lands on Tuesday morning, then I will draft 800 words that evening and send them to the comment editor of the local paper before I go to sleep.

Coping. If I reach 1,200 words and I am still setting out background, then I will delete everything above my argument and rebuild the piece from that sentence.

If there is no reply within five working days, then I will send one two-line chase, and if nothing comes back by the Monday after that, I will send the piece to the trade publication instead.