“Buying Meredith was about buying brands, not magazines or websites.” Neil Vogel, then CEO of Dotdash Meredith, wrote that line in a staff memo on February 9, 2022, the same memo that ended the print edition of Entertainment Weekly, as Al Jazeera reported that day. If you want to know how to get featured in Entertainment Weekly in 2026, start there. You are no longer pitching a magazine. You are pitching a brand that lives on a website, a social feed, a video channel, and a red carpet livestream, and it judges stories by one thing above all: whether it gets to show readers something first.
Entertainment Weekly is a digital brand now, not a weekly
Time Inc. launched Entertainment Weekly with a first issue dated February 16, 1990, positioned as a sister title to People. For close to three decades it was a weekly print magazine with a sharp critical voice, a grading system for movies and albums, and recurring franchises such as the Fall TV Preview and the year-end Entertainer of the Year. In 2019 the print schedule dropped to monthly. Meredith had already absorbed Time Inc. by then, and in late 2021 IAC’s Dotdash bought Meredith and formed Dotdash Meredith.
The print run ended a few months later. Vogel’s February 2022 memo cut print for six titles, Entertainment Weekly and InStyle among them, with the April 2022 issues as the last. The company framed the move as a bet on brands rather than paper, saying it would invest over $80 million in content across its brands that year. In April 2022, TheWrap reported that editor-in-chief Mary Margaret, the first woman to run EW, would step away, and that executive editor Patrick Gomez would lead the brand as general manager. On July 31, 2025, Dotdash Meredith renamed itself People Inc., which is the owner you will see listed today.
Two practical points follow for anyone pitching. First, check the current masthead before you write a word. Titles shift at digital publishers, and a pitch addressed to a departed editor reads as lazy. Second, understand what the digital EW publishes. The site runs breaking entertainment news, TV recaps, reviews, long interviews, video segments, podcasts, and the format that defines it: the exclusive reveal. First Look still exists as a franchise. So do cover-style packages, trailer premieres, and set-visit stories. Recaps and reviews are staff-driven and seldom pitchable. Exclusives are where outside teams get in.
What does EW actually run as an exclusive?
Look at EW’s archive and a pattern jumps out. The brand trades in access. Its best-known stories are almost never about a project in general. They are about a specific asset the reader could not see anywhere else that morning.
Two dated examples show the template. On November 21, 2010, months before HBO premiered Game of Thrones, George R.R. Martin told readers on his own blog not to miss the new issue of Entertainment Weekly, which carried a “first look” at the show with ten exclusive photographs from the set. The author of the books sent his own fans to EW. That is what a first look does when it works: the talent becomes the distribution. On September 5, 2018, EW revealed the first images of Brie Larson in costume as Captain Marvel on its cover, and the photos ran across entertainment sites that day, each one crediting EW. Marvel got a news cycle six months before release. EW got the traffic and the citation.
Both examples share a structure. A studio or network controlled a visual asset nobody had seen. It picked one outlet. It paired the asset with access, usually set photos plus quotes from the people who made the thing. It set a date and held it. Everything else on the internet followed.
The formats EW runs fall into a short family. A first-look photo gallery gives readers new stills from a film, series, or stage production. A trailer or poster debut hands EW the premiere slot for a piece of marketing, usually with a short interview attached. A cover reveal, for a book or an album, lets EW show the art before anyone else. Exclusive clips, set visits, and casting announcements round out the group. Talent interviews ride alongside nearly all of these, because a photo with no voice attached is a press kit, not a story.
This is the honest answer to how to get featured in Entertainment Weekly: you do not pitch yourself, you pitch a reveal. A founder profile, a trend quote, or a product announcement rarely fits the editorial model, because the reader has no thing to see. Reframe the ask around an asset. Instead of “our director would love to talk about the film,” offer “the first three stills from the film, plus thirty minutes with the director, publishing the week the festival lineup drops.” The second version gives an editor a headline, a slot, and a reason to say yes before anyone else does.
None of this requires a Marvel budget, but it does require a project EW readers recognize or will recognize soon. A debut novelist with a buzzy imprint, an indie film coming off a festival premiere, a returning series with a loyal fan base, or a musician with an established audience can all fit. A brand launch with no entertainment hook usually cannot. EW covers movies, TV, books, music, theater, and the people who make them. If your project sits outside that circle, no amount of polish will get it in.
Build the exclusive with the SCOOP Score
Most teams treat the pitch as the hard part. It is not. The hard part is building something worth pitching. Before you contact anyone at EW, run your package through what I call the SCOOP Score: five tests, each scored zero, one, or two, for a maximum of ten. Pitch at eight or higher. Below eight, fix the weak test or pitch a smaller outlet first.
S is for Sole first. Has this asset appeared anywhere, in any form? A still that ran in a festival program, a cover posted to the author’s Instagram for an hour, a clip shown at a fan event and filmed on phones: each one drops the score. A two means nothing has surfaced, and you can guarantee it will not surface before the agreed publish time. A zero means it is already out. Editors at reveal-driven outlets check, and a broken promise of exclusivity follows a publicist for years.
C is for Calendar. Is there a date that makes this news? Release dates, premiere dates, festival slots, pub dates, and tour announcements give an editor a reason to run the story now rather than never. A two means you have a confirmed date and enough lead time for EW to schedule the piece. A one means the date is soft. A zero means you are asking for coverage with no reason the reader should care this month.
The first O is for Original visual. Is the asset good enough to carry the headline? EW sells reveals with images and video, and the Muck Rack State of Journalism 2026 report found that 37% of journalists value high-resolution images in a pitch. For an exclusive, that floor is higher. A two means multiple cleared, high-resolution images or a finished clip, with credits and rights spelled out. A one means a single usable image. A zero means you are promising art that does not exist yet.
The second O is for On-record access. Who will talk? A first look with a ten-minute call with the director, showrunner, author, or lead actor beats the same photos with a canned statement. The same Muck Rack report found 58% of journalists value interview access to relevant sources. A two means confirmed talent with a time window. A one means a secondary voice, such as a producer. A zero means a press release quote.
P is for Post-reveal plan. What happens after EW publishes? Martin linking his readers to EW in 2010 is the model. Talent posting the EW link, a studio account quote-sharing the story, a newsletter pointing fans to the piece: these make the exclusive worth more to the outlet. A two means a written amplification plan that credits and links EW. A zero means you plan to post the same assets yourself at the same minute, which turns the exclusive into a duplicate.
Score honestly. An indie package often scores a two on Calendar, a two on Sole first, a one on Original visual, a zero on access, and a one on Post-reveal: six. The fix is seldom more money. Most of the time it is one confirmed interview and a second cleared still, which moves the package to eight.
Pitch it short, pitch it early, and keep your word
Once the package scores eight or higher, the pitch itself should be short, because it can be. The Muck Rack State of Journalism 2026 report found that 69% of journalists prefer pitches under 200 words, 62% prefer a one-to-one email, and 70% say clear relevance to their beat matters most. An EW exclusive pitch fits that easily, since the SCOOP Score already did the thinking.
Send it to the right desk. EW splits coverage by vertical, so a TV first look and a book cover reveal go to different editors. Read the bylines on the last ten comparable exclusives, find the editor who handled them, and confirm that person still holds the role. A pitch that names a recent story the editor ran, and explains why yours belongs next to it, shows you read the site.
Structure the email in the order the editor will decide. Open with the asset and the date in one sentence: what it is, when it can run, and that EW would be first. Follow with the talent on offer and the window for the interview. Add a line on the project’s audience: festival reception, a prior book’s readership, a returning season’s fan base. Close with the embargo terms and your amplification plan. Attach one low-resolution preview, or a private link, and hold the full-resolution files until the editor says yes.
Timing decides more of these than polish does. Exclusives get booked ahead of release windows, and crowded windows (fall TV, summer tentpoles, awards season) fill early. Pitch while the editor still has open slots. If the answer is no, ask once whether a different asset or date would work, then move on. A clean no today keeps the door open for the next project.
Then keep your word. Hold the embargo to the minute. Do not let a cast member post the image an hour early. Do not offer the same asset to a competing outlet as a backup. If you care about how to get featured in Entertainment Weekly more than once, this is the step that decides it: editors remember who delivered what they promised, and who did not.
If you work without a studio behind you, the same logic scales down. An independent filmmaker can offer a first look at a festival-bound short with the director on the phone. A self-published author with a real readership can offer a cover reveal tied to a preorder date. A musician can offer a video premiere. The bar is EW’s audience interest, and the SCOOP Score tells you whether you clear it before you spend an editor’s time. Teams that want help building the package or reaching the right desk can work with Instant Press, but the framework works the same either way.
Here is the short version. Entertainment Weekly has been a digital-only brand since its April 2022 issue, owned today by People Inc., and it lives on firsts. Build an asset nobody has seen, attach a date, a real image set, and a real person who will talk, plan how you will send readers to EW, and score it before you pitch. Eight out of ten gets you in the conversation. Keeping your word gets you invited back.