Op-Eds

Making Op-Eds (Slightly) Easier

Insights, Issues Public Experts Face, Public Expertise for Research Organizations / By

It usually takes a ton of investment (time, energy, patience) to get an op-ed published, and it’s a rare researcher who isn’t frustrated by the experience. Just to get going, you must:

  • develop the idea;
  • figure out a news hook if there isn’t an obvious one;
  • figure out where you want to have it published (and can, realistically, have it published);
  • find the contact information for the opinion editor at that outlet; and
  • figure out whether they want the entire piece as a submission or just a pitch.
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Is The Conversation Now Worth Talking About?

Insights, Moving from Expert to Public Expert, Public Expertise for Research Organizations / By

Traffic to The Conversation — that written-by-academics-for-everyone-else site that’s always been a port of last resort for expert opinion content — is way up since the beginning of the pandemic, says Columbia Journalism Review.

“Way up” = 81 million page views in April for all The Conversation sites plus republication by other sites — double that of April 2019.…

You Are Already More Precise

Insights, Issues Public Experts Face, Moving from Expert to Public Expert / By

Watching pundits deploy other people’s research is like watching kids play with lit M80s: the best outcome to hope for is that nothing bad happens and it’s over quickly. Every other outcome is much, much worse.

Which is to say: Bret Stephens’ recent column for The New York Times citing a discredited study (cowritten by at least one author with white nationalist sympathies) advancing (as the Times’ correction put it) “a genetic hypothesis for the basis of intelligence​” among Ashkenazi Jews is exceptional only in the stupidity of its cherry-picked research, not the fact that it cherry picked.…