How to Approach Press (If You Wish to Be Successful)

"I hope you can step up and give us some publicity [for our show that opens in four days]."

I don't make a habit of talking PR shop on my songwriting blog but Ronni Reich recently shared the above "pitch" she received, and I thought I'd take this opportunity as a teachable moment. That pitch exemplifies a few common misconceptions many folks have about interfacing with press, so here are some pro tips for how to properly orient oneself:

 1. A journalist's responsibility is to her audience, not to you. It does not matter how important, interesting, or relevant something is to you (or to your client!); it matters how important, interesting, and relevant something is to her audience/the world, and most specifically to her editor. Those curatorial decisions are hers to make and that is why you are contacting her.

Make the best case for why the project/story might be of interest to her/her outlet and equip her with all of the info she needs to make that case to her editor.

2. A journalist doesn't "give you publicity." If you want to make a journalist cringe, approach her as if you're asking a sleazy favor or as if she owes you something. There is an entire code of ethics devoted to this. You are not asking for help or for a favor, and you are certainly not passive-aggressively demanding what's owed you.

Respectfully ask for (and thank her for) her consideration.

3. Timing is everything. They call it "news" for a reason: it's timely. It happens in cycles and on deadlines. Different outlets book or close content on different timelines but we're talking months/weeks ahead for arts coverage, not days. And certainly never after the fact. ("We released an album last fall, will you review it?" = That's not news. "We have a Festival next week, will you cover it? = Booked already. Not a chance.) A great project pitched too late = no story at all. Period.

Know the production schedule of the outlet you're pitching. Be early, be on time.

4. In general, follow the Golden Rule. If you want a journalist to read/watch/listen to your work, then you need to read/watch/listen to hers first. Give her the careful consideration, attention, and respect you would like to receive in return. Pay attention to her interests, preferences, style, columns. In the age of Google, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, there is no excuse for being uninformed when making contact with a journalist.

Read/watch/listen to a journalist's work before making contact and pitch her (or refrain from pitching her) accordingly. All the time. Every single time.

Obviously, this isn't everything. PR is a full-time job and a field of specialty in itself. Don't have time to keep up with thousands of media contacts' personal preferences, deadlines, schedules, outlets, and recent work? That's why you hire a publicist! But these are my quick late-night offerings, for the win, for the world. 

Step Five: Don't you know that the time has arrived?

In which a person comes on board.

It has been ages, dear Knights,  and a progress report is due. Over the past many months, I have done the following:

• Re-upped with the band kids.
• Sang my first two open mics ever at Bar 4.
• Started a brass quintet, played Christmas gigs all over NYC (a goal since my arrival in 2004).
• Subbed for the Brooklyn Symphony Orchestra and played a gig with the Metro Chamber Orchestra. Gave my contact info to several other brass players, on request, and have begun to get offers for paying gigs on the NYC horn circuit.
• Finished and recorded my first arrangement (if you don't count my attempt to arrange the Indigo Girls for wind band in college), one that's been in my head since 2003.
• Started a writers' group, wrote some poems; reaffirmed my feminism.
• Conducted a choir for the first time since 2003. (And this time, mercifully, not 300+ middle schoolers.) 

And the grand finale is a case of right person, wrong time. For the past 2-3 years, I have been looking for a drummer for SMK. For the sound I have in my head, I must must have a percussionist. Without one I've been spinning in circles. I have posted Craigslist ads, I have asked friends and colleagues, including a certain grade 'A' percussionist who was willing but who felt her lack of drumset specialization precluded her from joining. Since then, however, she has been banging on found percussion (which, for my vision, is the best kind of all!) and therefore:

• As of last week, I am collaborating with this lovely perc pro who, in about 15 minutes, was able to intuit and execute exactly what I'd been carrying around in my head all this time. Easy. And we are playing the Bar 4 open mic on Tuesday, April 23. #LWatCDR.

Wee.

Ouch, the Onion. Ouch.

FACT: I have not written a song in ten (10) months.

OTHER FACT: It's not because I haven't tried, it's because all of my best energy and creativity and brainpower is spent elsewhere, so when I sit down to write I have positively nothing to say.

But wow, the Onion, sock it to me. Now I'll drag my sad ass to bed without having written anything and also feeling every second of my precious life ticking away. So thanks.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/find-the-thing-youre-most-passionate-about-then-do,31742

My advice? Just find the thing you enjoy doing more than anything else, your one true passion, and do it for the rest of your life on nights and weekends when you’re exhausted and cranky and just want to go to bed.

Moh. 

fallen away

fallen away?
but maybe that's just it
there's some fiery pit
that burns because all
your casting out
made it

when you leave me (first)

when you leave me
first i do not
think
but

trace your still-warm spaces (indentations, marks, empty) on a circuitous route

i may unwittingly prepare
for a long
drought

storing substitutes in heavy pockets

i may hibernate

retreat to sleep under goosefeather fluff (the high as low as pillowed downs and just the window's light come in)

i may move
real
slow

or do the thing that's closest, like whatever my hand finds to touch (the loads of dishes, someone else's stuff)

i may
get stuck

that pile of papers, the messages, the clothes (whose job it was not mine to fold)
even the piano

i may eat
feeling unsatisfied

if I
am lucky I may

see something

a seed catalog with pink azaleas, seafoam nail polish, lavender bath salts, periwinkle stockings
or
that island candle I made a few weeks ago

and I will light it
but

I leave you
first
when my voice breaks
the sound barrier

- sk, 2/9/13

the grand canyon (winewood dr)

like the clay

we used to get from that
abandoned rural construction pit
the rusty powdered ground
that pounded 'round our cotton Keds
the walls, big enough to fit
our tallest and most ballooned schemes
and how the massive concave bend pulled
our spinning bikes down in
and, skilled with sufficient speed,
barely pushed us up again

then afterward how that wet reddish muck
became the clods, the shoes
the pastels and chalks and rouges
whose soft edges I'd scrape
against every last pavement
or house
or office space
to home
whatever that is

-sk 1/22/13

poem: pond water

you take my hand against the animal

hot and damp

bristling up my thin wrist

plunged beneath

the murky pond water

glows browngreen and warm

gliding fast among

life-sized frogs

we dart and chase like

fat minnows

you admire the swell and lift of

my swabbed hair

the wedding will come soon

- sk 1/21/13