You run a 40-person CPA firm. You just closed a merger, launched a client advisory practice, or hired a partner away from a Top 25 firm. You write a press release, send it to the general inbox at Accounting Today, and wait. Nothing happens.
That silence is normal. Accounting Today receives a steady flood of firm announcements, vendor launches and contributed articles every week, and its editors have a clear sense of what their readers (firm leaders, partners and the people who sell to them) will click. Most pitches fail because they are written for a general business audience, not for accountants reading about their own profession.
Learning how to get featured in Accounting Today is less about clever pitching and more about picking the right door. There are five of them, and each has its own rules.
What Accounting Today covers
Accounting Today is published by Arizent, the New York company that also owns American Banker, Financial Planning and Employee Benefit News. It runs a monthly print edition and a daily digital news operation at AccountingToday.com. Daniel Hood has led the publication as editor-in-chief since 2011. Michael Cohn runs the digital side, Chris Gaetano covers technology, and Roger Russell has long covered tax.
The coverage splits into a few predictable lanes. Tax regulation and IRS news fill a large share of the daily feed. Practice management is the second big lane: mergers and acquisitions, private equity investment in firms, talent shortages, pricing, and client advisory services. Technology gets its own editor and its own annual coverage, from AI tools for audit to the VAR 100 ranking of technology resellers. Then there are the rankings, which anchor the editorial calendar.
What it does not cover much: general small business advice, personal finance for consumers, or anything where the accountant is a side character. If your story is about a business that happens to use an accountant, you are pitching the wrong outlet.
Route one: the firm news desk
The most common way firms appear in Accounting Today is through short news items on mergers, new offices, leadership changes and notable hires. The publication runs regular roundups of firm and personnel news, and its M&A coverage has grown with the wave of private equity deals across the profession.
To land here, your announcement needs three things. A clear hard fact in the first sentence (who merged with whom, effective when, combined headcount or revenue if you will share it). A reason the profession should care, such as a geographic expansion, a new service line, or a firm crossing into a ranking tier. And a contact who will answer a follow-up email the same day.
Size matters, but less than you might think. A Top 100 firm adding a region gets a story on its own. A smaller firm gets in when the deal says something about a trend editors are already tracking, like PE-backed platforms buying regional firms, or firms exiting audit to focus on advisory. Frame your news as an example of the trend, not as a standalone brag.
Route two: the Voices column
Accounting Today’s Voices section runs bylined commentary from people inside and around the profession. A recent print issue, for example, carried a tax strategy column by Mark A. Luscombe, principal analyst at Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting, alongside practice management and technology pieces from consultants and firm leaders.
This is the route most firms should try first, and the one most of them get wrong. Editors are looking for practitioners teaching other practitioners. A strong Voices pitch reads like the talk you would give at a state CPA society conference: a specific problem, a method you have used, and what happened when you used it. A weak pitch reads like a white paper with your logo on it.
We use a simple filter with clients called the Profession-First Test. Before a column goes out, it has to pass three questions. Would a partner at a competing firm learn something usable from it? Does it name a specific number, rule, or case rather than a general principle? And could the piece run with every mention of your firm removed and still be worth reading? If any answer is no, the draft goes back for a rewrite. Columns that pass all three are the ones editors accept.
One practical note: Arizent’s print editions state that submitted manuscripts become the publisher’s property. Read the terms before you send a piece you planned to reuse on your own blog.
Route three: the rankings
Accounting Today’s rankings are the closest thing the profession has to a public scoreboard, and they are open to anyone who fills out the survey. Each February the editors publish the full schedule for the year. In 2026 that included the Top 100 Firms and Regional Leaders, Wealth Magnets ranking firms by assets under management (published in June), the VAR 100 (July), the Best Firms to Work For (produced with Best Cos. Group and published in November), and the Top 100 Most Influential People (December).
The pattern is consistent. A call for submissions opens roughly two months before publication, stays open for about a month, and asks for a firm questionnaire or survey. Firms that miss the window wait a year.
If you lead a firm of meaningful size, put every relevant submission deadline on your calendar now. Rankings produce coverage that keeps working: the list itself, regional write-ups, and the follow-on features where editors quote leaders from ranked firms. The 2026 Top 100 Firms package, for example, included a feature built on what senior executives at ranked firms named as the profession’s biggest challenges.
Route four: the Top 100 Most Influential People
This list deserves its own section because it is the one most people do not realize they can enter. Each September, Accounting Today issues a call for nominations by email. The list profiles association leaders, regulators, thought leaders, practitioners, academics, consultants and what the editors call grassroots activists. The publication explicitly accepts self-nominations.
The 2026 call ran until September 25, with nominations going to Daniel Hood. Each nomination asks for a short description of the candidate’s influence on the profession and contact details. Select candidates get a follow-up email.
A credible nomination shows influence that others can verify. Speaking at AICPA or state society events, leading a committee, publishing research that other firms cite, building a widely used tool, or driving a policy change all count. Follower counts do not, on their own. If you are two or three years away from a realistic nomination, the work starts now: bylines, speaking, and visible service to the profession.
Route five: the expert source
The last route is the quietest and often the most valuable. Accounting Today reporters regularly quote outside experts on tax rule changes, IRS operations, technology adoption, and firm economics. Being one of the people a reporter emails when news breaks is worth more over time than any single placement.
You earn that spot by being useful before you are asked. Send a reporter a short, specific note when you have a real data point: your firm’s survey of clients on a new reporting requirement, a pattern you are seeing across returns this season, or a clear explanation of a confusing IRS notice. Keep it under 150 words, include your phone number, and do not attach a press release. If the note helps them, they will remember you.
Mistakes that sink Accounting Today pitches
The most common mistake is the vendor pitch disguised as commentary. A software company submits a column about “the future of audit,” and every third paragraph circles back to what its product does. Editors at trade publications have read thousands of these. They spot the pattern in the first paragraph and stop reading. If you sell to accountants, your column has to teach something your product does not do, or teach a method that works with any vendor’s tools.
The second mistake is the generic angle. “Why firms need to embrace technology” or “five tips for tax season” could run anywhere and say nothing new. Compare that with “What happened when we moved 1,100 individual returns to a fixed-fee model,” which is specific, testable, and impossible to write without real experience. Specificity is the single biggest predictor of whether a pitch gets a reply.
The third mistake is timing. Pitching a tax planning column in late March, when every reader is buried in returns and every editor is running deadline news, is a waste of a good idea. Watch the calendar. Year-end planning pieces land best in October and November. Practice management and talent pieces work in the late spring and summer, after busy season, when partners are thinking about how to run the firm differently next year.
The fourth is ignoring what already ran. Search AccountingToday.com for your topic before you pitch. If the publication covered it last month, your pitch needs a new angle, new data, or a counterpoint. Telling an editor “I saw your piece on PE deals in March, and here is what it missed from the perspective of a firm that turned down three offers” is a much stronger opening than pretending the earlier piece does not exist.
How to write the first pitch
Whichever route you choose, the first email should be short enough to read on a phone. Start with the subject line as the news itself: “Regional Leader firm exits audit, moves 30 staff to CAS” beats “Exciting announcement from Smith & Co.” Open with the single fact that makes the story worth covering. Follow with two or three sentences of context: why it matters to other firms, what number backs it up, and who is available to talk.
For a Voices pitch, send a one-paragraph summary and a proposed outline instead of a finished draft, unless the editor asks for a full piece. Name the specific readers who would benefit (managing partners at firms under 50 people, for example) and the one method or number the column will teach.
Follow up once, about a week later, with something new rather than a “just checking in.” A fresh data point or a sharper angle gives the editor a reason to reopen the thread.
A 12-month plan for one firm
Put the routes together and a realistic year looks like this. In the first quarter, while busy season keeps everyone heads-down, prepare. Pull the data you will want to talk about later: client counts by service line, pricing changes, staffing ratios, technology adoption. Draft two Voices column ideas and run them through the Profession-First Test.
In the second quarter, pitch your first column after April 15 and submit to whichever rankings fit your firm when the calls open. In the third quarter, send one or two expert-source notes to reporters on topics where you have real data, and, if you have a credible candidate, prepare a Top 100 People nomination for September. In the fourth quarter, pitch a year-end planning or trend piece and announce any firm news that has built up over the year.
That plan does not guarantee coverage. It does give you four or five serious shots across a year, each one aimed at a door that is open at that moment, which is far better odds than a single press release sent to a general inbox.
That is the whole playbook for how to get featured in Accounting Today. Knowing how to get featured in Accounting Today comes down to three habits. Pick the right door, lead with a fact the profession cares about, and write like a practitioner talking to peers. Most firms skip at least one of those steps, which is exactly why the ones that do all three stand out.