Philip Gray was promoted from deputy op-ed editor to op-ed editor at the Los Angeles Times in August. He leads the team that edits the Times opinion columnists, contributor essays and letters to the editor. Gray has also been an opinion and news editor at Bloomberg, The New York Times and The Washington Post. He started his career at his hometown paper, The Wichita Eagle.
The Public Scholar recently spoke with Gray to mine his insights on writing op-eds. In the following edited and condensed version of the conversation, Gray shares his op-ed wish list, tips for ensuring your submission lands in the correct inbox and advice for academics interested in sharing their expertise with wider audiences.
Q: How does the L.A. Times opinion section see its role in shaping public discourse?
A: I like the word “shaping,” because part of our role as editors is to put things on the radars of our readers. Sometimes we publish an op-ed because topics have fallen off of people’s radars. A good example is the war in Ukraine. We can’t publish a weekly piece about that war, but it needs continued attention.
More broadly, we’re always trying to bring in fresh ideas. Readers have topics in mind already, but they want deeper insights or perspectives they never considered. You never know when someone’s gonna come along with a piece about a nuclear missile silo for sale in Kansas.
Q: Yes, I’m so glad we connected through that piece! And I’m thrilled to know you’re interested in submissions from Inside Higher Ed readers. On that note, what distinguishes a strong L.A. Times op-ed from pieces in other national newspapers?
A: There are situations in which a competitor could publish a piece we publish. But the L.A. Times tries to serve an audience of California and the West. We have readers outside of that area, but they read the L.A. Times because they care about that region. So a connection to California and the West is what’s distinctive about a piece that you’d only find in the L.A. Times.
We’ve published a series of pieces that were dispatches from different states—Wyoming, Utah, Colorado. These are far from Southern California, but the western United States has a lot of issues in common, including drought and public land. We speak to people who care about those issues and that region of the country.
Q: Have you published any recent-ish, compelling, academic-authored op-eds?
A: We recently published a piece by an Alabama professor who’s writing a book about people with mental illness supporting others’ recovery. He’s done a lot of thinking and reading on mental illness, homelessness and the policies that make a difference. He explained how institutionalization has been tried and failed. The data shows that it’s expensive and harmful. The effective approach is to get people off the streets and put them into homes. “Housing first,” as it’s called, affords people a secure place to sleep every night so that then they can address addiction, mental illness or joblessness. He wrote an op-ed that published as “Executive Order to Institutionalize Homeless People Defies Data.”
Other scholars use personal experience to highlight broader points. A UC Santa Barbara scientist who has run a lab explained that overhead-cost cuts are not victimless. He educated me, as I’ve never run a university lab. His piece published as “Those Cuts to ‘Overhead’ Costs in Research? They Do Real Damage.”
A California historian also highlighted National Endowment for the Humanities research during budget cuts. Small sums of money helped California to learn about itself—its history, where people lived before the missions were set up and how those populations shifted in the decades after the missions. It’s really fascinating stuff. That was only possible because of the National Endowment of the Humanities. His story published as “A Mere Trickle of Funding Gave Us a Flood of Information About Colonial California.”
Q: What issues or themes are you especially interested in right now?
A: We’re always open to unexpected stories with fresh perspectives. We’ll publish many pieces on the tug-of-war between the Trump administration and California entities—state government and the UC systems. We’ll be careful that they don’t all say the same thing.
Our readership cares about climate change, a huge Western issue, especially in California, which is leading the transition away from fossil fuels. We have an endless appetite for pieces about that transition, if they offer something new.
Civil rights and human rights always turn up in the op-ed pages. Also some very local stories, like L.A.’s recovery from the wildfires of January. Our readers are living with the pollution and rebuilding—a huge, years-long story.
We’ve also published dozens of pieces since January on immigration enforcement and the effect that’s having on communities. No two pieces we publish on this topic are alike, and the story keeps changing. There’s more to be said by new voices with new expertise.
Q: What’s the best way for a first-time contributor to get your attention?
A: You may not believe me, but the best way is to send a fully written draft to oped@latimes.com. That’s a shared inbox that my team and I monitor together. A submission sent to an individual risks getting lost in the deluge [of] email. They could be out sick or on vacation. They could have left the company. This shared inbox is important to us. We prioritize pieces that arrive there.
Q: What strengths do scholars bring to op-eds that they should lean into? And have you noted any common mistakes in their submissions?
A: Academics might not get the attention of an op-ed editor at the moment they’re publishing papers. General readers tend not to care about that timing. That sounds harsh, but there’s a huge silver lining.
If academics see a news trend or event that’s not being discussed enough, they can get an op-ed editor’s attention by bringing their wealth of expertise to that story. We don’t care if your information is from a decade ago. News gets our attention, and we’re seeking fresh takes.
Q: How should academics think about translating complex ideas for a general audience?
A: Scholars writing for academic audiences habitually use precise language and big, unfamiliar words. When you’re writing for a general audience, think of the piece as though you’re saying it out loud. Academics don’t talk the way they write. When academics talk to me, I usually understand them.
Q: Once a piece is accepted, what’s the typical editing and turnaround time?
A: We move quickly. A writer might submit a piece Tuesday morning, hear acceptance by midday and get notes from me before end of day. If it’s related to the news, and we want to get it online while readers are paying attention to that news event, it could be online less than 24 hours after submission.
Q: If a submission is declined, is it worth trying again with a new idea?
A: Submitting an op-ed is a numbers game. Like baseball, you gotta go up to bat over and over. We get hundreds of daily submissions but can only publish three to five pieces a day. If declined, absolutely try again with a new idea, but don’t resubmit the same piece.
If we don’t select your piece, watch for similar news events. You might revisit a six-month-old submission and realize, “Oh, only the top two paragraphs need to be rewritten. My argument still needs to be made. I’ll change the top paragraphs to reference today’s news instead of the thing that happened six months ago.” That is definitely worth sending to us again.
Q: Are you also open to idea-driven essays that might not necessarily have a news peg?
A: Yes, but people have higher success rates if connecting ideas to news. It doesn’t need to be this week’s event. It could be a broader trend, like how immigration enforcement is changing in the U.S. right now.
If the bigger idea can be connected to something tangible happening in the news, then it’s going to be an easier sell. That’s not because editors think that way. It’s because readers pick up the paper or go to latimes.com thinking, “What’s new?” or “What can shed light on what’s happening in the world right now?”
