An Open Letter to Musicians & Other Performing Artists Looking To Get Their Info In The Newspaper
I wear a lot of hats -- lit journal editor, guy who writes poetry & fiction, unrepentant geek -- but the hat that actually pays my bills is being an editor in The Lifestyles Section of The Worcester Telegram & Gazette. It's a mongrel of a job that involves, among other things, laying out pages, helping reporters develop stories, writing my daily
Pop Culture Notebook
, writing my soon-to-return What You're Listening To column, editing the Go section calendar and a bazillion other odds and ends. Consequently, I tend to get a lot of questions from local musicians, poets and other artists about how to get word of their events in the paper. To that end, I like to post a FAQ every now and again, and it's been a while since I last did it. So ... on to business. (The information below pertains to the Telegram, but really, it's pretty much the same everywhere. Consult your fine local periodical to obtain contacts and addresses relevant to your area.)
How do I get my gig in the paper? The first, and most important thing, is to tell us about it. If your show is in the Worcester County area, send an email to submissions@telegram.com with the basic information: Who, What, When, Where, How Much. Maybe a little background information on performers or if its a beneift or some such, but don't go overboard. In our case, all of this information is put into one database by a very nice lady. This is the database that I and other relevant editors use to decide what goes in our various calendars, what we're going to recommend in our 10 Things to Do and The Weekend Starts Now features, and what's going to become full-length stories. Send the email at least two weeks in advance, and please, put the information in the body of the email, not in an attachment. You have no idea how annoying attachments become when you have to plow through a lot of them.
Can I just email you or send you a Facebook invite? Sure. But that won't guarantee that you'll get in the paper. I am absent-minded on the best of days, and get kind of bombarded with information about events from all over the country. If I'm busy, which is often, I might not even see it, or I might lose track of it because I get distracted by shiny objects. The best thing to do is email the info to submissions@telegram.com, and drop me or another reporter you think might be interested a line with more information. If you can give me a compelling reason to write something, I'll probably remember it when I see the listing in the database.
How do you decide what goes where in the paper? Every Friday, at about 4 p.m., I go through all of the listings in the database for the next Thursday to the following Thursday, and compile a list of events I think are noteworthy. While doing this, I spend a bit of time listening to bands I'm unfamiliar with on ReverbNation or whatever, so I can be sure not to leave off some touring band whom I don't know, but which is fantastic. (Sometimes this trick actually works.) Then, I sit down with my boss, the assistant features editor, and we work out what bits reporters have already claimed, which bits we'll assign a writer to, which ones I'll write a "pick" for, and what three we'll just call out with a photo in the calendar. Then I have to locate photos for the calendar, and move them to photo engraving before I leave, so I can have them ready to use to build the calendar on Monday morning. It's kind of an intensive process. I have two hours alotted for it on my schedule, but I pretty much always leave work late.
How do you choose photos to run in the paper, and how can I get in on that action? The photos in the calendar every Thursday are, usually, acts we've either written about too much or too recently, but which we think are still going to be a great show worth seeing, or acts which we think will be a show a lot of people will want to go see, but which, for whatever reason, we're not able to write up right that moment. Obviously, considering the time crunch I'm operating under, I don't have time to go tracking down artists and asking for photos. Thankfully, bands mostly have websites and social media presences these days which have publicity pics posted to them. The purpose, traditionally, of these pics is so some poor, overworked schmuck like me can go in and grab the photo and run with it. However, in the age of "tagging" photos on Facebook and MySpace, this has become slightly more difficult, so please do me and yourself a favor and CLEARLY MARK PUBLICITY PHOTOS ON YOUR WEB PRESENCE!!! I recommend making a separate folder on Facebook, so things don't get mixed up with pics taken by your friends and fans. We'd rather not accidently run a photo that the band doesn't have permission to use. This can be a real headache for me, and when in doubt, my usual method of dealing is to scrap the art entirely and give the publicity to someone else. Also, make sure the pictures don't suck: nice quality, high-definition photos work best. Don't just put up a snapshot from someone's phone of four guys in jeans and T-shirts standing in front of a wall. Action shots work best. Whenever possible, I want to run pics of people holding an instrument or in front of a microphone. Something with some motion. I'd rather have one awesome shot of one member of the band doing something than a boring shot of the entire band standing around. Remember, the point of this exercise is to make a reader want to go see you!
What do I do if you or someone else from the paper contacts me? Well ... talk to us, obviously! Here's the thing: Working in this department, I rarely ever have call to be hostile to anyone I'm interviewing. I might make a critical remark in my column or in a review, but really, mostly I'm content to just ignore things I don't care for. I have the luxury right now of only writing about what interests me. I rarely have time to commit actual acts of journalism, which means if I do, I think it's important. Now, I understand a lot of local artists aren't really used to talking to a reporter, so if you find yourself in this position, and aren't sure what to say, do this: Tell a story. Start at the beginning, and add details that make it real for someone who wasn't there. It might be the story of how a poetry slam went, or how a CD got made, or how you learned to play guitar, but if you're unsure how to proceed, start at the beginning. The reporter will guide you with questions if they need you to move along further into the story, or want you to elaborate on something. Sometimes the reporter will ask stupid questions. Pretend they're not stupid. Sometimes, the stupid question is asked because the reporter needs to spell something out for the reader, or sometimes just to stall for time while they finish typing up the previous question. Sometimes the stupid question is just stupid, but usually it's there for a reason.
Well. That doesn't seem so bad, does it? Remember: No matter what paper you're dealing with, the guy or girl at the newspaper is likely doing a job by themselves that a team of three or more used to do, and hasn't gotten a raise in at least three years. (Because no one's gotten raises in the past three years in this business.) Most likely, they stick working in the arts & entertainment section because they care about what they do, because they think art matters, and that readers should go support local artists and art venues. Often, they're constantly fighting for resources with other sections, because higher ups don't think the arts & entertainment pages are very important. (I don't have this problem, thankfully, although resources have been scarce for everybody these days. I'm immensely lucky to work for a paper that understands that what we do is important, and has been game to work with us to come up with new ways to handle entertainment content. I am seriously aware how lucky I am, and know a lot of my friends at other papers elsewhere in the country are far-more under the gun.) A news reporter friend of mine once quipped in the office that, "everyone in Lifestyles is a workaholic." He wasn't far wrong. I'm lucky to live in a town with a lot going on, but the price of that is, there's a lot going on. Anything you, as a performer, can do to make it easier to cover you is greatly, greatly appreciated.
Hopefully, this has been some help to someone out there.
How do I get my gig in the paper? The first, and most important thing, is to tell us about it. If your show is in the Worcester County area, send an email to submissions@telegram.com with the basic information: Who, What, When, Where, How Much. Maybe a little background information on performers or if its a beneift or some such, but don't go overboard. In our case, all of this information is put into one database by a very nice lady. This is the database that I and other relevant editors use to decide what goes in our various calendars, what we're going to recommend in our 10 Things to Do and The Weekend Starts Now features, and what's going to become full-length stories. Send the email at least two weeks in advance, and please, put the information in the body of the email, not in an attachment. You have no idea how annoying attachments become when you have to plow through a lot of them.
Can I just email you or send you a Facebook invite? Sure. But that won't guarantee that you'll get in the paper. I am absent-minded on the best of days, and get kind of bombarded with information about events from all over the country. If I'm busy, which is often, I might not even see it, or I might lose track of it because I get distracted by shiny objects. The best thing to do is email the info to submissions@telegram.com, and drop me or another reporter you think might be interested a line with more information. If you can give me a compelling reason to write something, I'll probably remember it when I see the listing in the database.
How do you decide what goes where in the paper? Every Friday, at about 4 p.m., I go through all of the listings in the database for the next Thursday to the following Thursday, and compile a list of events I think are noteworthy. While doing this, I spend a bit of time listening to bands I'm unfamiliar with on ReverbNation or whatever, so I can be sure not to leave off some touring band whom I don't know, but which is fantastic. (Sometimes this trick actually works.) Then, I sit down with my boss, the assistant features editor, and we work out what bits reporters have already claimed, which bits we'll assign a writer to, which ones I'll write a "pick" for, and what three we'll just call out with a photo in the calendar. Then I have to locate photos for the calendar, and move them to photo engraving before I leave, so I can have them ready to use to build the calendar on Monday morning. It's kind of an intensive process. I have two hours alotted for it on my schedule, but I pretty much always leave work late.
How do you choose photos to run in the paper, and how can I get in on that action? The photos in the calendar every Thursday are, usually, acts we've either written about too much or too recently, but which we think are still going to be a great show worth seeing, or acts which we think will be a show a lot of people will want to go see, but which, for whatever reason, we're not able to write up right that moment. Obviously, considering the time crunch I'm operating under, I don't have time to go tracking down artists and asking for photos. Thankfully, bands mostly have websites and social media presences these days which have publicity pics posted to them. The purpose, traditionally, of these pics is so some poor, overworked schmuck like me can go in and grab the photo and run with it. However, in the age of "tagging" photos on Facebook and MySpace, this has become slightly more difficult, so please do me and yourself a favor and CLEARLY MARK PUBLICITY PHOTOS ON YOUR WEB PRESENCE!!! I recommend making a separate folder on Facebook, so things don't get mixed up with pics taken by your friends and fans. We'd rather not accidently run a photo that the band doesn't have permission to use. This can be a real headache for me, and when in doubt, my usual method of dealing is to scrap the art entirely and give the publicity to someone else. Also, make sure the pictures don't suck: nice quality, high-definition photos work best. Don't just put up a snapshot from someone's phone of four guys in jeans and T-shirts standing in front of a wall. Action shots work best. Whenever possible, I want to run pics of people holding an instrument or in front of a microphone. Something with some motion. I'd rather have one awesome shot of one member of the band doing something than a boring shot of the entire band standing around. Remember, the point of this exercise is to make a reader want to go see you!
What do I do if you or someone else from the paper contacts me? Well ... talk to us, obviously! Here's the thing: Working in this department, I rarely ever have call to be hostile to anyone I'm interviewing. I might make a critical remark in my column or in a review, but really, mostly I'm content to just ignore things I don't care for. I have the luxury right now of only writing about what interests me. I rarely have time to commit actual acts of journalism, which means if I do, I think it's important. Now, I understand a lot of local artists aren't really used to talking to a reporter, so if you find yourself in this position, and aren't sure what to say, do this: Tell a story. Start at the beginning, and add details that make it real for someone who wasn't there. It might be the story of how a poetry slam went, or how a CD got made, or how you learned to play guitar, but if you're unsure how to proceed, start at the beginning. The reporter will guide you with questions if they need you to move along further into the story, or want you to elaborate on something. Sometimes the reporter will ask stupid questions. Pretend they're not stupid. Sometimes, the stupid question is asked because the reporter needs to spell something out for the reader, or sometimes just to stall for time while they finish typing up the previous question. Sometimes the stupid question is just stupid, but usually it's there for a reason.
Well. That doesn't seem so bad, does it? Remember: No matter what paper you're dealing with, the guy or girl at the newspaper is likely doing a job by themselves that a team of three or more used to do, and hasn't gotten a raise in at least three years. (Because no one's gotten raises in the past three years in this business.) Most likely, they stick working in the arts & entertainment section because they care about what they do, because they think art matters, and that readers should go support local artists and art venues. Often, they're constantly fighting for resources with other sections, because higher ups don't think the arts & entertainment pages are very important. (I don't have this problem, thankfully, although resources have been scarce for everybody these days. I'm immensely lucky to work for a paper that understands that what we do is important, and has been game to work with us to come up with new ways to handle entertainment content. I am seriously aware how lucky I am, and know a lot of my friends at other papers elsewhere in the country are far-more under the gun.) A news reporter friend of mine once quipped in the office that, "everyone in Lifestyles is a workaholic." He wasn't far wrong. I'm lucky to live in a town with a lot going on, but the price of that is, there's a lot going on. Anything you, as a performer, can do to make it easier to cover you is greatly, greatly appreciated.
Hopefully, this has been some help to someone out there.
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