Op-ed Guidelines
To our readers and contributors in the Tufts community,
As a student-run newspaper reporting on issues pertinent to Tufts, your input is crucial to us. We regularly publish op-eds from students, faculty, staff, alumni, residents of areas surrounding the university and other stakeholders in the well-being of our community. We want to give a platform to the multifaceted voices that comprise our university. Op-ed submissions are an integral part of our connection with you, our readers. As such, we would like to clarify our guidelines for submitting op-eds and what you can expect from the process.
Op-eds must relate to Tufts University or its students and community members in some way. As the Tufts Daily covers news, features, arts and sports across Tufts’ four campuses, op-eds must similarly have a connection to Tufts or its host communities. Although the piece does not have to be primarily about Tufts, it must provide a connection from its subject matter to the university’s stakeholders.
Your submission should be no longer than 1,200 words. We may ask you to shorten your piece further in the case of printing constraints, but 500–1,000 words is a good length for submissions. We value concision but understand that certain topics demand a lengthier explanation. We reserve the right to edit your submission in accordance with The Associated Press Stylebook guidelines, as well as for clarity. We never seek to alter the intent or impact of your words. However, we must maintain our standards of grammatical and stylistic consistency. If our editorial team has any questions or proposed changes that we feel would alter the meaning of your words, the executive opinion editor will contact you to ensure that they are acceptable to you before publishing them. However, we will make grammatical changes according to AP Style at our own discretion. If you are unsatisfied with any proposed changes from our end, you are free to publish your work on a different platform. Ultimately, the Daily’s editors have final discretion over rejecting a submission for any reason.
We will rigorously fact-check your work. We seek to provide a fair platform for a diverse array of views, and we cannot do so without ensuring that all facts in your piece are substantiated. Please use hyperlinks and clear citations of sources. All changes will be proposed and confirmed through direct correspondence with the executive opinion editor. If we feel that a fact in your piece cannot be corroborated with any information available online or otherwise, we will generally omit that fact. We will not bring our own personal views into our evaluation of your work; as long as credible sources back your claims, we will leave them as is.
To make the submission process as seamless as possible and to give us enough time to work with you, we ask that you submit your final draft before noon two days prior to when you would like the piece to be published. Additionally, we ask that you please be available via email, phone or electronic message until 10 p.m. the night before you would like to publish in case any questions should arise. We also kindly ask that you do not make submissions that have already been (or will be) published via other platforms.
To submit your piece, please send it to opinion@tuftsdaily.com. We deeply appreciate your readership of our paper and engagement with us. We look forward to working with you.
Letters to the Editor
Letters to the editor attempt to provide feedback, additional context or otherwise amend content published in the Daily. The Daily encourages a diversity of voices and views in our letters, and all Tufts community members are welcome to contribute. A letter to the editor will preferably be around 500 words and generally refer to an article that has appeared within the past seven days. As with the op-ed guidelines, a letter to the editor should be exclusive to the Daily and is subject to edits, including AP Style.
