Ask an Editor: Stuart Whatley, Huffington Post Associate Blog Editor gives the inside info on how to get published

Stuart Whatley is a Huffington Post Associate Blog Editor in the Washington D.C. bureau. Other than HuffPost, his writing has appeared in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Guardian, TruthDig.com, The American Prospect, Free Inquiry and other outlets. He spoke with OpEd Project Intern Ravenna Koenig about what he looks for in a good op-ed, what’s up next for the Huffington Post, and the most important lesson he’s learned about submitting opinion pieces.

Ravenna Koenig: What advice would you give to people looking to get published by the HuffPost?

Stuart Whatley: The most important thing is speaking from a perspective where you have credibility. A lot of the pitches we get are from people who read the newspaper, make observations and become kind of armchair experts… and you can do that—in some ways it’s the only way to start—but at the end of the day it kind of puts you at a disadvantage. Obviously we’re going to take an op-ed on the filibuster from a senator who’s working to reform it versus someone who just read the New York Times that morning. Write from where you have credibility.

RK: I know you get a really wide range of pieces, what are the common elements of the best pieces?

SW: Well, you want to get the style and the format down. 700 words or so, state your point early on; you don’t want to lace it with a forced use of big words. Clear, succinct. The biggest thing for us—because we’re a pretty fast-paced news site—is timeliness. It means you probably need to know something about it beforehand… Like the Citizens United court case a few weeks ago: we had tons of stuff that came in that day, the next day, and the day after that. After that, people were sending in fine pieces, but everything had already been said.  It’s easy for your average citizen to make all the same observations on what it meant, but the ones we ran offered something beyond that— [were by] people who were speaking from a strong expert position. For aspiring writers the idea is just: be able to tell, are you going to be able to be the best authority on subject?

RK: In just a couple of years the HuffPost has gone from being a relatively small blog to perhaps the major online news source ( 3.7 million unique visitors), adding new content areas and developing a non-profit investigative journalism arm. What’s next for the Huffington Post?

SW: We’ve been opening some local pages, like the LA page, the Denver page, we’re opening an art section soon, a foods section. Basically what you can see us doing is creeping out to cover all those things that traditional newspapers have generally covered. With my job it’s just about getting more and more strong outside voices contributing on the site.

RK: Out of curiosity, how did you get your job as a Huffington Post Associate Blog Editor?

SW: My first year out of college I worked for a law firm, which was completely unrelated, but I had always enjoyed writing, so during that time I started doing the whole blind submitting op-eds to newspapers thing. That’s how I started learning what they were looking for, what kinds of things belong on the op-ed pages, who should be writing them, etc. I would either never hear back, or get turned down but then I started tailoring [my articles] to where I had expertise. The first thing I got published was in the Atlanta Journal Constitution about Wake Forest University, where I went to school, changing its policy to make submitting one’s SAT score optional. Since I was a recent grad, I was speaking from a position of some credibility. And then once you start getting stuff published, it lends itself well to continuously being published. After that I did some internships in [Washington] D.C.; then I was an intern at the Huffington Post before I was hired. At that point I had been working with the news side and the blog side, so I had a good sense of what was going on in the news, what was timely, and also a good sense of what we were looking for on the site.

RK: The difficulty of transforming “old media” employees into “new media” employees was recently cited by Kenneth Lerer as the reason a number of people “ungracefully” left the HuffPost. What do you think is the difference between “new” and “old” media journalists?  What has been your experience with these factions?

SW: In some cases you can definitely tell when you’re dealing with someone who’s used to old media versus someone who’s used to new. Fortunately my part of the HuffPost, the blog side, can be a lot like old media. We’re looking for op-ed type pieces, but obviously there’s more flexibility than in your traditional newspaper. You can tell when people aren’t too tech-savvy or blog-savvy but they still fit in well enough. Bascially, we just have a lot more options [than traditional media]: we can run your traditional op-ed or something more unique—it all depends on who wrote it, the angle they used, etc. The biggest difference is definitely the faster-paced environment—we turn it over much more quickly than a traditional paper ever would. I think there’s a subtle paradigm shift [from old to new media]—I don’t think it’s absolute, a lot of stuff is still the same. Pieces still need to be timely, topical, and well sourced—all that stuff is still the same. It’s more a matter of going viral, making a unique point that can’t be found anywhere else. With so many voices out there, it’s pretty hard to have a totally unique argument. We’re always looking for stuff that stands out.

RK: You write predominantly about politics: in a world so inundated by so much information, how do you filter through it all and decide what to write about? Do you have any advice for how the average person can abreast of political events?

SW: It’s impossible to keep track of everything. I would find a collection of sources and sites that you trust and that you enjoy reading. Here we all have RSS feeds that deliver everything to you. I’m big into magazines. I subscribe to, like, ten different ones, even though I can’t read them all it gives you a good sense of what’s going on. Basically you have to be a voracious news consumer to get a thorough understanding of what’s going on in the world on any given day.

Ask a Mentor-Editor: Zeba Khan, finalist in The Washington Post’s “America’s Next Great Pundit Contest”

Zeba Khan is an independent social media consultant who works with nonprofits, and an advocate for Muslim-American civic engagement. In 2008, Zeba founded Muslim-Americans for Obama, a social network dedicated to mobilizing the Muslim-American community in support of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. She is also the creator of the online grassroots community for The List Project to Resettle Iraqi Allies, a nonprofit that aims to help U.S.-affiliated Iraqis successfully resettle in the U.S. Most recently, Zeba consulted with Ashoka’s Youth Venture to help develop their first-ever global virtual campaign to incubate young social entrepreneurs worldwide.

Zeba’s work and writings have been featured in numerous media outlets including Newsweek, NPR, Reuters, Voice of America, Washington Post, The Guardian and The Stanford Social Innovation Review. Her work was also highlighted at the 2009 Personal Democracy Forum Conference in New York.

Ravenna Koenig (OpEd Project Intern): You are a social media consultant for nonprofit organizations, correct? What exactly does your work entail? How did you get started at that job?

Zeba Khan: Initially, I used social media like most of my friends – to connect, plan social events, stay in touch, etc. After I graduated from grad school, my interest in social media changed out of necessity. I had a friend who was starting up a nonprofit to help Iraqi refugees. He had a small staff and very limited funding but he also had a large number of people who wanted to give of their time. I realized pretty quickly that he had no way to harness these volunteers effectively given funding and staffing constraints. The easiest and most efficient solution was to build a social network so that these volunteers could identify themselves to one another and mobilize. The network grew rapidly, spawning chapters across the country, eventually becoming a very critical arm of the nonprofit. That was my introduction to how social media could be used to help an organization achieve its goals and improve its operations. Since then, I’ve consulted for numerous nonprofits and higher education institutions.  Each client has different objectives and focus but essentially my role is to help them think strategically about new media and what aspects of it make sense to implement given their specific goals.

RK: When you were an undergraduate did you have a firm idea of what you wanted to do? If not, how did your interest in women and minority issues evolve?

ZK: Not at all. I’ve always been interested in social justice and how inequality affects different populations. Looking back, those interests were continuously reflected in what I studied, what I chose to research and what I write about throughout college.  After college, those academic interests became more active and I pursued them through my work –whether that work was focused on youth, low-income residents of my city, or my faith community.

RK: How have your interests in media evolved over the course of your career?

ZK: Beyond being a consumer of news, I wasn’t very interested in media. I enjoyed writing but only for myself. I only began to think about my potential contribution in the field after graduate school. I think my interest came through a combination of realizing that writing was one of the most effective ways to make an impact in tandem with my field work (with various nonprofits). I also think it took time for me to become confident enough to even start trying to write publicly.

RK: You recently were selected as the first runner-up in The Washington Post’s “America’s Next Great Pundit Contest.” Your work was subjected to criticism and praise from both the American Public and professional members of the media. How was that experience? What did you learn from it?

ZK: Being subjected to the feedback of the WaPo editors and readers from across the country was one of the best experiences about the competition. I recognized from the start that not everyone has the chance to have the entire country be their writing coach and I took full advantage of it. Positive feedback encouraged me and substantive negative feedback only helped sharpen my writing. And I learned pretty quickly to let the baseless nasty feedback roll off my back.  All in all, I grew a thicker skin and I walked away more confident in my writing.

RK: Was the televised aspect of punditry at all limiting? I noticed Jonathan Caphart’s critique on your not smiling enough. Was that frustrating at all—being told to smile when you wanted your work and the issues it spotlighted to be the focus?

ZK: Talking about the news off the cuff in front of a camera with very limited time is definitely a new experience for me. There is so much more at play than your thoughts or your argument and with barely any time to express yourself, I found it to be a pretty challenging medium. As for Jonathan’s critique of me not smiling enough, it bothered me initially. I thought to myself, how can anyone smile when talking about unemployment, war, healthcare, etc? But ultimately, it is television and you need to engage the viewer. You’re not going to achieve that through scowling, no matter how informative you are. That’s not to say a big cheesy smile is good either but I’ve learned from my experience and from talking with seasoned pundits that slight changes in facial expressions can translate in big ways on camera. There are ways to smile without actually smiling.

RK: Have you had any encountered sexism in your professional life?

ZK: I can’t say that I’ve ever dealt with any sexism in my line of work. I think that might have something to do with the fact that much of what I do is online… a far more democratic space than a traditional work place.

RK: What is the one thing that helped you to get where you are that you didn’t expect?

ZK: Certainly my family and close friends have been supportive of me and I know their support has been immensely important. What I didn’t expect was what a profound effect the OpEd Project seminar with Katie would have on me. One amazing seminar at the right time made me determined and confident enough to submit my first pieces to national print and online papers.