Find Newspaper Editors

UPDATED: 2021! How to sell your articles to US newspapers

Whether you’re a freelance writer or self-syndicated cartoonist, an editorial illustrator, or opinion writer, you need to find editors to buy your work! Newspapers still exist, even though they’re mostly virtual. And newsrooms are on the hunt for good content from freelancers, not the pablum you find in content farms, like…well, you know who. (HuffPost, Forbes, for a start.)

Maybe you’re not a freelancer. You just want to mouth off to your favorite (or most hated!) newspaper columnist. That works, too. But you still need to find a contact list of newspaper editors, to know who to write to, for Letters to the Editor.

Looking for journalist positions is like applying for a job, but more fun: editors are smart, casual, funny, and personable. No HR nonsense here! These staff directories are often hard to locate on the newspaper’s own website (probably because they don’t want the public bugging them) , but as a writer, this is what you need: to find and target the reporters or department you’re looking to get in.

Where to find top news editors in the US

There are several lists of newspaper sites: California Newspapers is a good one for local

papers here in California, and Mondo Times is probably the best for national papers. (Mondo claims it also lists TV stations and magazines, but I only use them for newspapers.)

The problem is, Mondo is a slow site, with too many pages to click through to get the contact list of newspaper editors. And although it includes the circulation numbers and the top 3 or 4 editors of the paper, that’s not near enough for a journalist position. You need to find the right editor of each department.

Each paper has their own chain of command for content.  The top editors decide whether, for example, the restaurant editor is in Cooking, Nightlife, or even has her own department. And nowadays, with many papers cutting back, and working with a skeleton staff, you won’t know who is writing what until you study the paper and talk with the Managing Editor.

In addition, some  news sites link to the main home page of the newspaper; I don’t want the news, I want the news-writers! Don’t waste my time on pages loaded down with ads!

Emails and phone numbers of US newspaper editors

Newspapers have made some of their departments easy to find, of course: Circulation, Classified, Obituaries. (:( ) Those are their moneymakers. That’s not what this list of staffs is for. You need the names of the journalists, department heads and Managing Editor.

And most of these papers have a list of editors and reporters…somewhere… but they don’t want every new writer contacting them, so it’s hard to find! And they all call it something different: mastheads, newsrooms, staff, departments, contacts, or any number of other titles. It’s a hunt, even using sitemaps. And there are a lot of ad-filled pages to plow through, to find that page.

With all this in mind, I compiled the list below, directly linking to each newspaper’s newsroom contacts, which will be for my own future reference, as well as yours! They almost all include the editors and reporters by name, title, phone, and email.

This is an ongoing list and will be updated; I’ll add new papers as I scout the newsroom pages.

If you’re a freelancer or cartoonist, you’ll probably want to call or email the Features Editor (called the Managing Editor in magazines). Opinion and editorial writers will want to head to the masthead or Editorial Department, or Letters to the Editor. The rest of you, you’re on your own.

Corrections? Feel free to comment or send them on.

Contact United States Major Newspaper Editors