My First Opinion submissions folder is an awful lot like a buffet.
Perhaps 25% of what I receive is simply terrible: It tastes bad (it's not fun or engaging to read) and it has no nutritional value (it gives the reader nothing new or interesting). It's easy to pass on those.
Some submissions are fine. These pieces are often perfectly readable but don't say anything fresh, like stale dinner rolls — I could make them a little more fun to read by slathering editorial butter on them, but they're still just old bread in the end. Let's say this is 20% of what I get.
Then there's the bad vegetables, or what I think of as the "worthy but boring" piece: full of good, important information, but I know readers simply won't care unless we find a particularly engaging approach. I'd say this is another 20%.
That gets us to 65% of my submissions: pieces that are pretty easy to say no to.
Maybe 5% of submissions are must-runs. These are the pieces that make me think about something in a new way, understand a new perspective, question my prior beliefs. These are, I don't know, the lobster tail of the very fancy buffet. (For the sake of my metaphor, let's pretend that the lobster tail is cooked well and the restaurant limits how much you can have.)
That leaves us with the last 30%. That's where it gets hard.
At my editorial buffet, these submissions taste good. They make a decent point. They're often engaging, or I can punch them up easily in editing. I could probably publish all of these pieces and they would fit in with the First Opinion section.
But I can only take so much from the buffet before I get stuffed. Just because it looks pretty good doesn't mean I have room for it.
When I send a rejection email saying that I'm passing for bandwidth reasons, this is often the reason why: The piece fell into that 30% that I just don't have room for. I think authors often think: "You could basically just publish this as-is, so what's the problem?" And there are some pieces that I publish with only very minor edits. But even in those cases, the piece takes a fair bit of work on the back end.
So if I say I can't publish it, please know that I've considered it carefully, and all of this is inherently subjective. And send me your best lobster tail ideas: first.opinion@statnews.com.
Recommendation of the week: "Ponies" on Peacock, about two American women working as spies in Soviet Russia, is a bit like a goofier version of "The Americans." I love it so far.
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