In September 2006, I was angry at the way people were conflating medieval history with the Iraq war. Yes, we need to study history to understand modernity, but recasting modern wars as “Wars of Religion” is dangerous politics and bad history. So I wrote an op-ed, linked to the opinion editor at Minnesota Star Tribune and, after many rounds of editing, they published my first clip on the first Sunday in October.
My fiancee (now wife) and I went to a grocery store in Edina, Minn., to buy a copy of this paper. There, in the coffee shop attached to the store, a man was sitting, reading a paper, a copy of which opened the first page of the opinion section. In my article. I was a visiting professor at Macalester College in St. Paul at that time, just a few days after defending my Ph.D. It was strange but also encouraging to see that on that Sunday, people around me were reading something I had written.
Over the past few years, I’ve come to terms with the fact that I usually don’t need to argue why issues of public discussion of academics. But there is still a lot of work to be done How to do it. Another problem is that in institutions of higher education we are drowning in prestige economies that encourage academics to aim for and value the highest literature. That’s fine, but I want to argue that you’re more likely to succeed and do the best by focusing on the area.
Some facts: I was a professor at Dominican University, a great teaching institution in the Chicago area, for ten years. I’m now an advisor to history majors and minors at the University of Minnesota, or, as I like to think of it, a writer with a great day job in a major department. I have published more than 500 articles in various outlets and spent more than a decade traveling the country teaching academics of all kinds (students, faculty, staff and other people in related professions) how to write and, often in a critical way, how to write media writing. One of my key pieces of advice: Focus on local shops.
There are two related issues here: First, it’s really hard to get published The New York Times, The Atlantic and their peers. Second, even if you do, you may have less impact than you expected.
I New York Times The opinion page has a lot of influence, compared to other national stores. But every day The NYT publishes several guest articles, possibly selected from hundreds of articles. A few will be from knowledgeable pundits trying to comment on the news, but others will come from among the rich and powerful—celebrities, big politicians, CEOs, already famous authors. If you’re already famous, well, you probably don’t need my advice.
There is nothing wrong with being rejected by The NYT-I have been rejected at least a dozen times by that page and published there once—but it costs you time. The easiest way to get an opinion article published is to go fast. If you expect that The NYT rejection, which may never come (you just won’t feel it), that high window goes through and makes the piece difficult to place elsewhere. The same is true of other well-known parts of the country.
But the most important thing for me, unless the article from the country goes very far, may reach tens of thousands or even a few thousands of readers scattered throughout the nation or in the Anglophone sector. That may sound important, but that dispersion also comes with a cost. As a writer, I do best when I really know my audience. When I wrote for CNN, as I often did a decade ago, I had no idea who might read my work. That made it difficult for me to identify useful points of contention, to unnecessarily counter misconceptions or attacks, or even to know that my writing was making a difference.
A store located in a particular community, on the other hand, has a well-known student body. I think mostly of niche newspapers and magazines, but this is also true of specialty stores. I know almost who is reading Within Higher Ed and I can measure this story, you reader. I hope I got it right.
When I write in Minnesota, I know who might read my piece. I feel that they care about it, and we share the same directions. In Minnesota, I can compare the events to the “Halloween Blizzard” and think everyone knows what I’m talking about. I will have to spend at least a few sentences explaining things The Washington Post. Similarly, when I help academics submit essays (for example), Monitor (Jefferson County, Mont.), the Arizona Daily Star (Tucson) or I The Sacramento Beewriters were able to focus on local concerns, local readers, shared local traditions.
Finally, there is an unspoken (typical) relationship between local affairs and local higher education institutions. I tell my colleagues at the University of Minnesota all the time that if they’re writing on something newsworthy, they’re not editors Star Tribune and other local shops are eager to hear from them and their chances of publication are very good. Well-meaning editors want to publish expert commentary from of the area experts. But the broad rules of op-ed writing still apply—you have to be argumentative (not just technical), and you have to move quickly. Spending your time searching for a national outlet is a waste of time; Conversely, once you’ve started publishing locally, those bylines give you more stature to spread across the country, if that’s your goal.
It has always been my goal. I collected store bylines the way my kid collected Pokémon. And to this day, I still think about it The New York Times. I’m just as vulnerable to fame as anyone.
But in December 2024, I was trying to figure out what I could do after the election of Donald Trump. I knew there would be an attack on subjects I had written about for years—higher education, postsecondary education for students with disabilities, and Medicaid—and that I wanted to write about. Half of the views at CNN were closed over the summer, forcing me to think hard about what to do next. I decided that maybe I should focus on my home, my communities, and try to write articles that are useful to the people I live among.
So I stopped Minnesota Star Tribune a piece about RFK Jr. and the history of disability, which they accepted, even though I hadn’t written for them in almost 20 years (once in 2006, and once in 2008). A month later, I wrote to them about the Medicaid repeal. And then with Section 504 and disability education. Finally I was invited to the topic of the year.
As people know, the winter of 2026 was terrible here, with street killings and secret police destroying families. In this moment of crisis, I feel lucky to have a local voice, and I use it as much as I can. I encourage everyone thinking about public speaking to start by working close to home, rather than up in the sky.
