Opinion
Signed essays from writers who show their work — translating expertise into a position readers can weigh, agree with, or push back on.
Opinion journalism has a mixed reputation at some outlets, and often a deserved one. Too many treat the opinion page as a lower-stakes annex where the newsroom’s sourcing standards don’t quite apply. We run the opposite policy: every factual claim inside an opinion essay is checked the same way a factual claim in a news story would be. Writers can argue whatever position they hold. They cannot misstate what happened while doing it.
That distinction matters more than it might sound. An opinion essay is supposed to be an argument built on accurate premises, not a vehicle for asserting things that happen to support the writer’s conclusion. Our editors push back on unsupported claims in an op-ed exactly as hard as they would in a reported story — the difference is that the writer, not Epoch Signal, puts their name behind the conclusion.
Congress, the White House, and the daily mechanics of federal power, from writers who’ve covered the building itself.
Budgets, tax policy, and the federal balance sheet, argued by economists and former budget staff who’ve read the footnotes.
American foreign policy and its consequences abroad, written by former diplomats, area specialists, and correspondents.
Elections, courts, and the institutions that referee American public life.
Our columnists are a mix of staff writers and outside contributors — professors, former officials, practitioners, and specialists who have spent their careers in the subject they are writing about. Every contributor writes under their own name and lists any relevant affiliation or financial interest at the bottom of the piece, whether or not it is flattering to disclose.
We do not run anonymous or pseudonymous opinion pieces, and we do not run op-eds from public relations firms or undisclosed advocacy campaigns on behalf of a client. If a piece reads like it was drafted to serve someone’s business interest, our editors ask directly, and the disclosure goes in the piece or the piece does not run.
If an opinion essay makes a specific factual claim about a person or organization, we offer that party a chance to respond before publication, and again afterward if they raise a substantive factual objection once the piece is live. When a rebuttal meets our length and sourcing standards, we run it — usually as a short, clearly labeled response beneath the original piece, not buried on a separate page.
We read every submission that follows the guidelines below, though we cannot publish everything we receive or respond individually to pieces we pass on.
We typically respond within two weeks if we are interested in running a piece.
