Every week is different as an editor in the data centre and tech space, and this article will give some insight into my Editor’s inbox, the editorial decisions I make from inside the industry, what gets accepted, what gets put in the bin, and what does well from a press release POV.
I get a boatload of emails to wade through on a Monday morning, notiously known as my social day where I decide which articles make the cut for this week, which ones require extra assets, which ones are more commercial so I can’t publish it, and which ones just flop, so they end up in the bin. Usually, I’ll have articles scheduled in advance for this day, just so I can shove the wellies on and wade through the press releases and pitches heading my way.
Typically, if there’s a theme for the week or month, those articles are the same priority as urgent op-eds on current events happening right now.
You must consider how you present the articles to determine the order in which we publish them.
In my Editor’s inbox, I typically find a few good pitches, a few okay pitches that don’t quite fit, and then the ugly, the ones that promote too heavily, boast about how great they are, or follow the exact cadence and flow that AI-generated content brings, the type of AI content that someone has just copied and pasted without a human glancing at it. Spoiler: I typically put them in the bin.
If an editorial contains a bit of promotional content, I see if I can salvage it. I.e., I go back to the PR firm or marketer with a request to see if they can omit the named sections, as that would create grounds for acceptance and publication.
It’s in the bin
Around 60% of my inbox is in the bin. And that’s only Monday morning. With the bulk of the week scheduled, the rest of the week, I write articles to fill the gaps and put out pitches on websites and in groups searching for some sparkly editorial. Tuesday and Wednesday tend to be quieter inbox days, but Thursday and Friday really ramp up and even though I rarely work those days, I do try and flag things as priority Friday evening, for myself on Monday morning, to help ease the day.
Different things will catch the editor’s eye, but as a rule of thumb:
- I flag embargoed content to check straight away, just in case it’s topically relevant to industry news and market trends
- A disruptive subject line catches the eye much quicker than the standard way of summarising the article
- Addressing the Editor directly, or even putting a fun, refreshing greeting if you need to BCC your entire contact list, instead of “Hi (insert article). We’re not publishing robots; we get dozens of emails a day and when we get creative emails that shake things up, that’s what we pay attention to most. We don’t become a content mill and churn out every press release we’ve been sent.
If you have an article to submit, please use my contact form.
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