Thread by @Helenreflects

One of the things I'm excited about in this semester's grad seminar is I'll be teaching students how to write public philosophy! Nuts and bolts and all. Here's a little 🧵 with some of the things we are covering 1/

Here I'll talk about some general principles that apply to public philosophy writing. This can take many forms, e.g.,
* an op-ed (500 words or so) in a newspaper
* a longer-form essay in a magazine (e.g., @TheRavenMag1 @aeonmag)
* your own blog/substack (do not underestimate!) 2/

* a popular piece in edited volume such as in Wiley-Blackwell's @andphilosophy series
* a twitter thread
(and other things I am probably forgetting)
I will not be covering podcasts and other non-written or non-purely written formats (e.g., games, artwork) here 3/

Now, all these formats are quite different but there are similarities in the dynamics of writing. First, there is the element of timeliness. Some public philosophy is super-timely, other is more perennial. You need to take the time-element into account when writing. 4/

For example, I co-authored this letter in The Guardian following an asylum case in the UK where the applicant was denied asylum due to his lack of knowledge of Plato and Aristotle.
Story broke and we pitched the letter almost immediately 5/
theguardian.com/world/2018/jan…

As a matter of general principle: when you write a piece that is very time-sensitive you need to be really quick to pitch (otherwise lots of other people have pitched), and you need to be prepared to write something in full very soon after you have pitched. Budget the time 6/

It is easy to get behind the curve. Imagine, at this moment, you're interested in writing about billionaires going into space. Problem is, you cannot pitch that anymore bc the interest has waned, phenomenon has passed 7/

In some cases, it's possible to keep the idea in the back of your head. What if Bezos decides to make another quick round tour? Maybe you can sell your piece. Similar to not being quick enough for other events but maybe you can write on the one-year anniversary of that event 8/

Alternatively, you can write something if you're not right out of the gate if you can find a new angle or spin. This piece, co-authored with @shengokai. At the time, lots of pieces had already appeared on pandemic response in the US, but crucially.... 9/

theconversation.com/a-pragmatist-p…

Nobody had written yet about how pragmatists can shed a very new and interesting light on why so many western democracies have been sluggish, and leave it up to private initiative, while Amazon etc have been nimble. With this new angle, we could write our piece 10/

Similarly, in this piece with Sameer Yadav (on the former president's remarks about "hurting God") was pitched when other pieces were appearing, but no-one had taken the remarks as an opportunity to explain divine impassibility 11/
theconversation.com/yes-god-can-be…

When you pitch, be very clear about what your piece relates to and the main argument you'll use. Don't use jargon, explain why *you* are the expert who can write this piece. The editors get a lot of pitches. If you mire your pitch in specialist language, it's doomed 12/

It's important to be reflective about whether it's useful for you to write the piece. We don't want to turn into "universal pundits". The best public philosophy is written by people who are the right person to write the right piece at the right time 13/

For example, @add_hawk is an expert on the philosophy of games, wrote the book Games: Agency as Art where he argues the appeal of games is they allow us to exert agency in a certain way. He wrote this recent piece on Wordle latimes.com/opinion/story/… 14/

Note, it is not easy to write public philosophy! Most pitches get rejected. Moreover, it's yet another gatekeeper to get through if you want to do it. That process can be disheartening. You need to keep a good relationship with editors. All that takes time and practice 15/

It is totally fine to build your reputation and a public using tools such as your own blog, substack, Medium etc etc. where you don't need to go by gatekeepers. Also, you don't necessarily need to pitch each idea to the NYT. 16/

It's a mistake to think that the only impact you would make is with opeds in the NYT (personal disclosure: I don't have them and I've only pitched to them once or twice). That is a kind of prestige trap thinking similar to journals (it only counts if it's in Phil Review etc) 17/

You can also write public philosophy that isn't time-sensitive. There are lots of outlets for this more perennial philosophy, such as @aeonmag. For example, this piece I recently co-authored with @pclee698 psyche.co/guides/how-to-… 18/

Even though writing public philosophy is hard, it can be immensely rewarding. For this piece for @aeonmag I got so many emails from conservationists, a worker at a national park, retired high school science teachers etc. You can have a big impact! 19/
aeon.co/essays/how-awe…

Public philosophy is both valuable in itself (as one possible way we can give back to the community) and instrumentally valuable in putting you on the map for potential (cross-disciplinary) collaborations, or perhaps even trade book deals. It is definitely worth exploring 20/

Now, about the nuts and bolts of writing. It is my personal experience, both writing public philosophy and editing the public philosophy of others (for blogs and for the @andphilosophy series) that this is a special craft, to be learned through practice 21/

You need to pay *more* attention to the sentence-level prose than for a paper, because people reading your public philosophy don't need to read it (unlike e.g., an academic paper which people want to read to keep up with literature). If your prose is bad, that's fatal 22/

You can use a mechanical tool such as Hemingway.app hemingwayapp.com to check your piece. Is the level of writing OK (this is a mechanical check but still, you want to write at a level that is not harder than what a college student could read.)? 23/

Other simple things we often overlook in academic writing: too many passive sentences, long, convoluted sentence structures, too much use of "dyads" (e.g., "we compare and explain" "we infer and deduce") which slows down the reading 24/

Moreover, the structure has to be clearer and simpler. You need to be very careful of what to leave out and what to put in *especially* in works under 1000 words 25/

You also need to appeal to readers' epistemic emotions. The cheap way to do this is to use clickbait titles, but that's not enough and it often doesn't work. Rather, set up the question in a way that the reader is intrigued and wants to find out your take 26/

I recommend extensively line-editing your drafts, using a mechanical tool such as Hemingway for initial checking (don't just cut out all the passive sentences and adverbs, but you'll see many are redundant), and also reading your piece out loud to see if it flows 27/

And, when you work with an editor (so not in self-published stuff, obviously), they'll want to edit your work too, in a much more involved way than is typical for academic editing. Usually this helps your work to become more readable. 28/

You'll find eventually that public writing will have an effect on your academic writing too. You might find that you can have shorter, more efficient ways to convey things, lose baggage, make your prose more beautiful. Win-win! /end

Addendum: someone asked me, how do you pitch? How do you get an “in”? I will address these questions in the main thread. As with everything, the potential of success in cold pitching is low. Thus, it is important to maintain and cultivate good relationships with editors /30

A pitch needs to be brief and convey why it is interesting. Not just: i will use x and y philosophical approach to understand phenomenon of current interest but also *why* this is fruitful or interesting /31

It is good to start local or smaller scale. If you begin with no prior experience pitching to NYT or Guardian, it’s not going to work (likely). But maybe a regional newspaper like St Louis Post Dispatch is interested in your take on local news? /32

Alternatively, a personal blog can be a great way to reach many people and there are no editorial hoops/gatekeepers. One of my most-read posts is a piece on the Neverending Story and Enlightenment views on rationality. helenldecruz.medium.com/what-we-can-le… /33

even if you are not super well connected, a blog can eventually find a steady audience, and you might also get invited to write other pieces for different venues /34

I do think though that the problem of barriers is in part on the editors--I know they're constrained for time etc. but they overlook valuable expertise and reinforce hierarchies of prestige, as @PeriferlyCentrd explains here--blog.apaonline.org/2020/09/23/wom… /35

Nobody said that publishing in public venues is equitable. A lot has to do with connection (hence the suggestions to build up gradually, using local venues and perhaps your own blog), pitching cold is a difficult and unrewarding game (hope this answers your Q @ifalioncould!) /36