For general methods resources, visit the Methods page. For a list of possible data sources (quantitative and qualitative) and advice on data collection, visit the Data page. For resources specifically on Qualitative Methods and Statistical Analysis, visit those respective pages.

Writing for Public Audiences

Sociology blogs

Everyday Sociology | Markets, Power, and Culture | orgtheory | scatterplot 

Submissions guidelines for mainstream publications

The American Prospect | The Atlantic | Chronicle of Higher Education | The Conversation (specializes in pieces from academics) | Dissent | Fortune | The Guardian (op-eds) | Hechinger Report | Inside Higher Ed | In The Fray | Los Angeles Times (op-eds) | Mother Jones | The Nation | The New Republic | The New York Times (op-eds) | Slate | Wall Street Journal (op-eds) | The Washington Post (op-eds)

General advice for op-eds

Pitching/querying

• Generally, you will want to submit op-eds (i.e., opinion pieces) with a clear argument (which can be written in a thesis statement of one or a couple sentences)

  • It's okay (and often more engaging) to include personal perspective in your article, including first-person voice; articles that are entirely personal essays are often fine to submit, too

  • You can include some empirical data in your article as vignettes or statistics, but don't overdo it

• Always review the publication's submissions guidelines first

  • Most publications won't read full article drafts and want you to send them a one-paragraph pitch describing your argument concisely and provocatively (you may or may not want to include the full draft anyways)

  • Some publications (mostly newspaper op-ed pages) only consider full drafts 

• Always search the publication's website to see what they've published on this topic before

• Always include a one-paragraph pitch in your query email, whether or not you include a full draft

  • Include a thesis statement and one or two concrete examples of what you mean (you can include links)

  • From Slate's submissions 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."

  • Try to include a timely news hook, if possible

  • It's a good idea to engage with other writers on a topic, especially big-name writers (whether at the publication you're querying or elsewhere), and say how they're wrong

  • 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

  • The subject line of your email 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

• 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 draft, you can usually just paste it into the text of the email rather than including an attachment

• Send your query in an email; if you don't hear back after a week (or whatever time they specify in their submissions guidelines), you can send one follow-up email, but don't pursue it beyond that, and don't call them

• Don't submit to more than one publication at a time; wait until they reject your piece before moving on to another publication

  • If they don't get back to you, wait until the timeframe specified in the submissions guidelines passes, or just give up after, say, two weeks   

Writing

• Generally, op-ed pieces should be between 600 and 1,000 words (check the publication's website, though)

• Generally, the first paragraph of your piece (the lede) should start with your thesis; if not, there should be a paragraph near the top of the piece that briefly summarizes your argument (i.e., a nutgraf)

• 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.

• 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 ("According to so-and-so ...")

  • Mentioning lots of academics will make your piece sound too academic; if you're writing an online piece, you might want to instead link to their research rather than mentioning them by name

• Remember that you do not control the headline of your piece and normally need to defer to the editor about the final version of the piece (though don't afraid to stand up for yourself on important points!)

• Generally, op-ed pieces 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 (if, in fact, they are paying you); you may also need to follow up if you don't get paid in a timely manner

From "So You're Submitting a Draft to The Atlantic" (internal memo)

The fact that you’re reading this document means that you’re writing a story for possible publication in The Atlantic—we’re very excited to be working with you. Below we’ve assembled a few pointers that will help your piece be closer to done when you hand it in, as well as make our jobs easier. Thank you! We appreciate it in advance.

● Please submit your draft to us via Google Docs, not Microsoft Word.

● When attributing facts, we prefer to use links, not footnotes. Any time your writing relies on an online source, add a hyperlink to it on the relevant verb, like we did in this sentence. (If you’re ever unsure whether you should include a link, err on the side of adding one so that we can easily fact­-check your work.) If you’re citing something from a book, please link to Google Books if the text of the book is available and IndieBound.org if it’s not.

● If you’ve never written for us before, please tell us about yourself! Include a brief bio at the bottom of your piece. This should state your job, where you live, any books you’ve written, etc.

● Please avoid using “we” as a general pronoun, as in “We consistently make decisions that go against our own interests.” The same goes for “our” (e.g. “Our modern lives are full of distractions”), “let’s” (“Let’s consider another example”), and “you” (“If you look at the evidence...”).

● We have no hard rules about paragraph length, but paragraphs that consist of a single sentence (or even two very short sentences) should almost always be woven into the paragraphs around them. Similarly, any paragraph with more than, say, eight sentences should almost always be split into two (or more) paragraphs.

● Please avoid making calls to action, like “We must fix our educational system.” Any sentence including the phrases “We need to,” “We must,” or “We should” should be rewritten (or perhaps scrapped entirely—Atlantic pieces tend not to be op­-ed­-style rallying cries directed toward policymakers or the general public).

● When it comes to beginnings and endings, we prefer that the piece doesn't open with the recounting of an anecdote, and that the piece's final line is not a quotation, but the writer's original words. It is our view that anecdotes tend not to be as compelling as an idea or a question, and that quotations tend to be a crutch for a writer without a concluding thought.

● When referring to someone’s title, please use “a” or “the” before it and don’t capitalize it, like this: “Becca Rosen, a professor of anthropology at Oberlin College, says...” or “According to Gillian White, the vice president of marketing at Taqueria Habanero, ...”

● When referring to a company or organization that is not a household name, for the benefit of the reader please add a clause characterizing it: "a marketing firm," "a left­-leaning think tank," "a cybersecurity consultancy," etc.

● In most cases, we find photos or commission illustrations for our articles, but if for some reason you have original photos or know of an image that would be a perfect match for your piece, please let us know.

Our Style Guide, in Brief

● After a period, use only one space, not two

● Include Oxford/serial commas

● Em­-dashes should be formatted like this—with a long dash and no spaces.

○ Not ­­ -- like this

○ And not — like this

● Italicize the names of newspapers, magazines, online publications (such as BuzzFeed), and books

● Our readers aren’t all Americans, so please avoid phrases that assume they are, like “In this country” or “In our nation”

Sample pitches

Pitch #1

Hi XXXX,

No worries at all, thanks very much for taking the time to look it over. I had another op-ed idea that occurred to me after listening to the debate last night -- Sanders and Clinton were debating the merits of being more like Denmark, but my take would be that we should (and, practically speaking, could) be more like Canada, which has only small differences in its social safety net compared to the U.S., and which shares a similar type of economic system and similar set of demographics. Nevertheless, those policy differences matter greatly in terms of how people cope with unemployment, poverty, or personal crises. My book focuses on a comparison of the U.S. and Canadian social safety nets and what kind of assistance each system provides to individuals dealing with long-term unemployment. Policies regarding job retraining, health care, and family cash benefits were more generous on the Canadian side, and I could see the very real impacts those policies had on specific individuals and families struggling to deal with the loss of a job -- and, in my book, actually compare their outcomes with the ones people experienced on our side of the border. (That's not to say the Canadian system was always better, which I can get into as well.)

Would this be of any interest? I can think up other ideas if this doesn't work. Thanks for considering this!

Best,

Victor

Article that was published

Pitch #2

Hi XXXX,

Hope all is well. I wanted to see if you might be interested in a piece relating to big data and its growing use to evaluate people as workers, students, and consumers. The jumping-off point is the just-published book by Cathy O'Neil, Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy, which argues that the computer algorithms now in routine use by companies and governments in making decisions about hiring, promotions, sentencing, etc., serve to justify and exacerbate discrimination and inequality. While her solution is ultimately that we need to be humbler about our models and work to improve how accurately and fairly they measure merit, my research suggests that we need to challenge the underlying assumptions of this kind of analysis altogether: that meritocracy and measurement are unquestionably good things. Below are the first three grafs of my draft in progress: 

---

In her new book Weapons of Math Destruction, data scientist Cathy O’Neil describes how companies and governments evaluate us as consumers, workers, and students based on ever-more abundant and detailed data about our lives. In deciding whether to give us loans or jobs, promote or fire us, or target us for services or opportunities, it is now widespread practice to use computer algorithms to sift through terabytes of personal information, sort “good” people from “bad,” and ultimately arrive at supposedly impartial judgments about human potential. 

O’Neil makes a convincing case that we have gone too far in relying on these models of merit, which often incorporate unstated biases, fail to truly capture slippery concepts such as teacher quality and worker motivation, and discriminate against the poor and others who can’t so easily game the metrics. Yet her argument boils down to a belief that the computer algorithms aren’t good or equitable enough — yet. They need to be refined with sounder statistical methods, she suggests, or tweaked to give preferences to people from disadvantaged backgrounds. 

My own research on what I call the new technology of meritocracy, though, has convinced me that building better and fairer analytical mousetraps does not address the real problem. Even if we could perfect them, do we really want to live in a society that sorts and judges us with constant, unforgiving precision? In other words, the hypermeritocratic society we are building — in fact, have long been building, if now with shiny new hi-tech toys — has tradeoffs, particularly for the egalitarian social norms it will uproot.

---

In the piece, I'd mention the history of data-driven meritocracy that O'Neil doesn't really address, but that is the important backstory to the use of big data today -- from the innovation of civil-service exams developed to select Chinese bureaucrats, to the practices of Taylorism/scientific management that measured factory-worker productivity. I also think it's critical to recognize that the word "meritocracy," coined by the British sociologist Michael Young, was originally used in a pejorative sense: the idea was that a society evaluated perfectly by talent and effort would subvert democracy and justify a new aristocracy/oligarchy, as the untalented came to see themselves as solely to blame for their low status and eventually ceded their political power and rights to the elite. I'll bring up the points I make in my book about the tradeoffs between meritocracy and egalitarianism and how the new technology of meritocracy pushes us further in an unbalanced direction. I'll also connect that larger perspective with the situation of the long-term unemployed autoworkers I interviewed, whose previous jobs represented an alternative vision of egalitarian progress: unions with their seniority practices and employment protections are arguably the antithesis of systems of merit that are meant to hire, fire, and promote based on individual skill alone. In their long bouts of joblessness, the workers I interviewed suffered from self-blame and a sense of themselves as "losers" -- which reminds us of Michael Young's warnings about meritocracy and its social costs, however laudable and worthwhile a goal it is.

Thanks for considering this!

Best,

Victor

Article that was published