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At 11:55 AM 4/28/00 -0400, Larry T. wrote: >Did you send a press release to the local papers? >This actually works, you know. Also, try contacting >the 'city desk' person and talk to them personally. >Sometimes your one-on-one enthusiasm for the event >will motivate a major paper to send someone down. I agree 100% that maintaining contact with local press is a great way to get some free promo for gigs and recorded releases. However, rather than asking for the city desk person, you'd usually get better results talking to the arts and entertainment editor(s). The problem with going through a "regular" newsroom editor is that entertainment stories are considered "soft news" and even if they're keen to print it, it's unfortunately usually the first thing to get bumped when something more sensational breaks, like a fire, an accident, an armed seizure of a six-year-old Cuban boy, or a photo of the publisher's wife's sister's bridge club's bake sale raffle winner. Building a rapport with the arts & entertainment editor you'll more likely get better play and a much better chance of being mentioned repeatedly as other events happen. And it's often worthwhile to find out if a paper has more than one Arts editor, as it's common for there to be a separate one for a paper's ROP pages (the regular ones in the paper with the movie ads on 'em), the Arts magazine that a lot of papers run on Thursdays so we can sell more ads, AND the Sunday Arts section, and it can be amazing how little these three people can communicate with each other sometimes. Also, apart from the editors, make an effort to meet the people who actually write the reviews, as it's been my experience that many of them are themselves active participants in local music scenes, and you might pick up some shows that way. Play up the angle that your music is not the same as that being done by most of the artists who're sending them press materials. Send the editors gifts! (Passes/invites to your event, well-written, concise press releases that can be used almost verbatim, good clear photos, review copies of your releases...) Include good contact info and follow up on it (when they're NOT on deadline, or they won't want to talk to you), impressing the editor with your cool and friendly charm and non-pushy persistance. Tim (who's a graphic artist for, yes, a newspaper...)