How Do I Write an Op-Ed That Will Get Published in Major Media?
Over the past ten years, every Op-Ed the Etalia team has worked on with clients to develop and publish has been selected for publication. When I tell people this, they’re usually skeptical. Either they don’t believe it, or they assume it’s because we have relationships with Op-Ed editors. It’s neither of those things. It's that we treat Op-Ed publication as a system, where each stage involves avoiding, eliminating, or mitigating a specific risk that would otherwise sink our chance of getting published.
We get a lot of people who come to us after they wrote an Op-Ed they couldn’t get published. Most of the time they think they didn’t get it published because they don’t have a relationship with the outlet they were pitching it to.
That’s never the real reason. And it’s possible to pinpoint where in the process they broke down. A lot of the time it’s right at the start: their core opinion isn't sharp enough, timely enough, or genuinely surprising enough to earn a spot on a competitive Op-Ed page.
Start with the thinking
That’s why when we work with clients, the first step we focus on is thinking. We work with CEOs and other executives, and with scientists themselves, to identify their unique opinions, where they have novel insights. Sometimes they've already written something: a book, a body of research. Sometimes we guide them through an exercise where we simply try to populate a list of 20 opinions they have. Then we find which insights they have that we can refine into one or more Op-Ed worthy opinions. Is the opinion non-obvious? Does it advance public understanding of something that matters right now? Has someone else already made it? For us, the key is to not invest time and effort in writing an Op-Ed based on a weak opinion. This is where a serious Op-Ed strategy for CEOs and scientific leaders begins: in the thinking.
By doing the work to find and refine an opinion, we make sure we're set up for success from the beginning.
The opinion is the core of the Op-Ed. If the opinion rises to the level of being worthy of an Op-Ed, and the argument we make to support it is strong–meaning it’s an argument we’re confident can be published as an Op-Ed–then the rest is mechanics. We can update the news hook, we can incorporate new supporting data points (like a new study or new polling data that comes out in the course of working to get the Op-Ed published), or trim the word count to suit different media outlets. In this way we refine the Op-Ed as many times as it takes until it’s accepted for publication.
Everything comes down to the worthiness of the opinion and the strength of the argument we make to support it.
Once we have an opinion that's genuinely Op-Ed worthy, the writing follows a set of rules and constraints that the Op-Ed medium demands. Clear structure. Plain language. One argument, fully developed, in 600–800 words.
Then comes pitching strategy: pitching persistently, systematically, and with one eye permanently on the news cycle. We build a target list of publications, work through it methodically, and when a stronger hook emerges in the news, we revise and keep going. An Op-Ed isn't dead because one editor passed. It's alive until it's placed.
Here's how the full process works.
One argument per piece
This is a hard rule of the op-ed format, one that can present a challenge for complex research. Unlike research papers which present all the evidence in its purest form, op-eds take a stance without hedging. Here are five questions to drive your core argument:
Can I make my argument in one sentence?
Has someone already made this argument?
Do I have strong evidence from varied sources (research, experts, direct experiences)?
What's the counter-argument, and can I knock it down?
Can I make this argument in 650–800 words?
Finding an argument that stands out can help it to earn placement. Is it timely? Does it advance a reader’s understanding rather than repeating something they already know? Editors often look for arguments that challenge conventional thinking, and new research often does just that. If you have insights that can change the way people think, you’ve got a hook ready to go.
Find a worthy opinion
We use a short checklist of criteria as a baseline, which you can also use to know if you have an opinion that would work as an Op-Ed. There are three baseline criteria:
Actionable
Timely
Unique
Shorthand, we refer to these three criteria as ATTUNE. (It’s clumsy acronym-making, I know.) If your opinion isn’t timely, won’t work as an Op-Ed. If it’s not unique, it won’t work as an Op-Ed. If it’s not actionable, it won’t work as an Op-Ed.
When I first learned how to write Op-Eds about 20 years ago, I was taught that I had to make my opinion relevant to as many people as possible. I was told to “make the guy in Iowa spill his morning coffee” with the power of my opinion. I still agree with this, but with a caveat: how widely relevant your opinion is determines more where you can publish an Op-Ed, rather than if you can get it published. You might have an opinion that’s actionable, timely, and unique–but relevant for a specialized audience. And that’s okay. The key is knowing what outlets are appropriate for approaching with what kinds of Op-Eds, based in part on who the Op-Ed is relevant for.
I also get a lot of questions about what makes a good news hook. In other words, what is happening in the news that makes an Op-Ed timely? Here, there are pros and cons to writing Op-Eds hooked to major news stories. On the pro side is that it’s easier to show that your Op-Ed is not just timely, it’s relevant to a huge audience. On the con side, a major news story means a lot of people writing Op-Eds hooked to that news story, which means more competition for publication space. One often overlooked strategy is to hook an Op-Ed to an event happening on the periphery of the news.
For example, see this Op-Ed by WHO Executive Director Chikwe Ihekweazu and Garry Aslanyan, host of the Global Health Matters podcast, on why every country needs its own public health agency. Even before the hantavirus outbreak, or the latest Ebola outbreak dominated the news, Ethiopia was battling an outbreak of Marburg virus that began in late 2025 and was over earlier this year. That outbreak happened in a country with a strong public health agency that detected the first cases quickly and mobilized a response. It was never a big, global news story, but it was a significant enough event to hook an Op-Ed to–and Ethiopia’s success in bringing that outbreak to a swift end was evidence in support of the Op-Ed’s argument.
Op-Eds are the gold standard in any executive thought leadership strategy. If you want to publish Op-Eds, knowing how to refine an opinion until it meets that standard is the first, critical step.
Want the complete framework? Download Etalia's full guide How to Turn Your Research Insights Into Op-Eds built specifically for scientists and researchers who want their work to reach the people who need to hear it.
