History News Service ...

If you are a historian and want to reach a broad public audience, you may be interested in knowing about History News Service (HNS). HNS is"an informal syndicate of professional historians who seek to improve the public's understanding of current events by setting these events in their historical contexts. HNS carries out its work in three ways: by providing ‘op-ed' articles to the press, by putting reporters and editors in contact with historians, and by trying to improve links between the journalism and historical professions."

HNS was founded six years ago by James Banner and Joyce Appleby to assist historians in publishing op-eds in the popular press. With much experience placing their own op-eds in American newspapers, Jim and Joyce receive submissions from other historians, make decisions about whether the submission has potential, and offer editorial advice. Once a text is in final form, HNS submits it for consideration by contacts in editorial offices in many North American newspapers. Occasionally, an op-ed will be chosen for exclusive publication in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Christian Science Monitor, or the International Herald-Tribune. More commonly, HNS op-eds appear non-exclusively in newspapers across the country.

I am a member of HNS's Advisory Board and, like several of my colleagues at Cliopatria, am an author of HNS op-eds. Jim and Joyce are, frankly, slave-drivers. More than once, after several revisions, I've said:"No, I can't even stand to look at this bloody thing one more time"; and, firmly, Jim has told me:"Yes, you will do it and we need to get it out now." Under their whip and lash, I've published op-eds about Martin Luther King (twice) and his Ebenezer Baptist Church, on Burma's Aung San Suu Kyi and Trent Lott, and about the Marches on Washington and the Constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.

Don't tell them I said this, but Jim and Joyce do know what they're doing. In addition to History News Network and TomPaine.com, my HNS op-eds have appeared in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Salt Lake Tribune, the San Diego Union-Tribune, the South Florida Sun, and the Wilmington [Delaware] News-Journal. My non-HNS op-eds have appeared ..., well, nowhere. The experience can be interesting. One morning, I was awakened by a telephone call from Wilmington. The caller said:"Can you be ready to go on WDEL Talk Radio in 10 minutes?""Well, yes, I suppose," said I,"but about what?" I'd had no advance warning that the Wilmington newspaper had published the op-ed, but I was prepared to defend it, even if I was buck naked to the world.

But that's the end of an op-ed. The beginning is: Do you have a news hook? For more information, read this and this.