Image
Four years ago, I was hired to be the cultural editor for a morning news and public affairs program on WYPR Radio, the NPR affiliate in Baltimore. Although I did not have any experience as a broadcast journalist, the station offered me the job because I had been involved in Maryland's arts community for 25 years, and I had been a frequent guest on several shows on WYPR in my capacity as the music director of the Baltimore Choral Arts Society. On the show I interview people involved in all manner of creative pursuits: classical and popular music, theater, dance, and other performing arts, as well as movies, literature, and even cooking, gardening, and sports. I cover issues related to race, education, religion, and public policy on the arts, and I do a weekly Culture Calendar that makes brief mention of events happening around the state.
Having been on both sides of the mic, as a guest and a host, I've come to appreciate the people in the arts who are particularly good at describing their work and stating the case for why their work deserves attention and interest. On our show, three producers and I decide which events or topics we want to cover. We take into account a number of different factors, including how interesting we think the topic will be to our listeners, the personality of the guest and how s/he might come across on the air, and whether or not other media outlets have covered it. The decisions are often very difficult. I get about 150 emails every day from publicists and artists pitching stories they'd like us to cover, but I can only broadcast a handful of stories each week.
So, how does a particular topic make it through the morass that is my inbox and get covered? The people who are most often covered by our show and in other media are usually adherents to what we might call the Five Fundamentals of Media Relations.
Know the Show
Delete the word "promote" from your vocabulary. It's not the job of journalists to promote anything, regardless of how worthy the cause might be. A journalist's job is to tell stories about people and issues that readers, listeners, and viewers will find enlightening and compelling. It's your job to suggest interesting, unique stories. In most cases, the fact that your chorus is singing a concert does not meet that standard. You need to find a way to position that event, or your organization, in the life of your community.
To do that, you need to cultivate relationships with journalists. At WYPR, there are certain people who approach us regularly with story ideas for their clients and organizations, and because we have worked with them before and know them to be competent and imaginative, we will be sure to give their idea a close look.
Our show is called Maryland Morning, and we only cover topics that have a Maryland angle. Therefore, for example, we won't cover a novelist from New York, unless she is in Maryland doing a book signing. Sometimes, I am asked to interview guests who will opine on President Obama's handling of the war in Afghanistan, or Glenn Beck's popularity with the conservative wing of the Republican Party. When people make these pitches to us, it's clear that they don't listen to our show because we don't do those kinds of stories, as interesting as they might be. If someone approaches us who knows what our show is about and can suggest something that will make our show interesting, then we are happy to entertain the suggestion.
Pitch in Plural
Sometimes reporters, producers, and editors have a particular idea or approach to a story that they would like to pursue. More often, however, journalists will respond to an idea that a source or an organization suggests to them. If you have an event you would like covered, think of several different ways that someone might cover it. For example, if you are performing Carmina Burana, sending a press release to your local newspaper that includes the calendar information (names of performers, date, time, place, etc.) will probably not result in a feature story.
A better approach might be to call an editor or reporter and talk about various angles their story might take. Maybe there is a couple who has sung together for 30 years, or parents who are singing in the adult chorus while their child is singing in the children's chorus. Maybe the tenor soloist is an award-winning physicist by day and a dying swan by night. Maybe the choreographer is a former gymnast who became a modern dancer. Find an angle that provides "feature fodder"—information that may be interesting to people who aren't necessarily interested in the arts per se but who might be interested in the people who make art. By suggesting multiple ways a reporter might fashion a story, you will increase your chances of it being covered.
Make Life Easy
Writers, producers, and editors are as busy and overworked in their jobs as you are in yours. Therefore, they are frustrated any time they are hindered in their reporting by incomplete or inaccurate information supplied by their sources. Keeping track of basic things goes a long way.
Keep your website current. If our producers choose to pursue a story but the website doesn't include easy-to-find, basic information, about a person or organization, the effort it could take to track down that information might be too much to invest in a story, given that there are a hundred other possible stories where the information is easy to find.
Be sure that the press release you issue is complete and that it has the correct contact information for the person who can respond to a journalist's questions. Also, be sure the information is correct the first time. Invariably, my daily dose of email pitches includes a few with a subject that begins, "CORRECTION." I can't get to the delete button fast enough. If a PR person can't get basic information right the first time, I can't have confidence that s/he will be competent enough to work with.
Ask the reporters in your area if they prefer to receive information electronically or in hard copies. Ask them if they prefer to have it sent to multiple people on their staff (i.e. the host of the show and the producer, the managing editor and the features editor) or just one person. Find out the kind of background information they will need as they decide whether or not to cover a topic, and get it to them in a format that works for them.
Know Your Audience
Once a reporter has decided to interview you or someone from your chorus for a story, be sure to tailor your responses to his/her audience. If you are a conductor talking about the Mozart Requiem on a radio station that plays classical music 24 hours a day, your rhetoric can be different than it might be if you are a guest on a morning drive-time television show that is intended for a more general audience. In my work as a journalist, I've found that a lot of classical music artists tend to lecture when giving interviews and the crux of their argument is that people should like classical music because it somehow makes them more sophisticated. This argument goes nowhere fast. Rather than suggest that people should like classical music, it's better to make the case that people already like classical music and that the music you're performing will appeal to them even if they aren't trained in music.
If you are a conductor or singer or composer, do things that establish your credibility on the topic of music so a reporter has reason to use you as a source. Publish articles in musical publications or write op-ed pieces about music and the arts for your local paper. If you blog about music, let the media in your area know and call attention to particular blog posts that you think will be of interest to the general public. Participate in pledge drives on public radio and television. Be seen and heard in the media talking not just about your own work but about the arts in general so that journalists will recognize you as a credible source on a topic they might not themselves know a lot about.
Mind Your Manners
Part of cultivating relationships is respecting and appreciating the work that journalists do. As performers, we appreciate when our audience tells us they have enjoyed our concerts, and the same holds true for producers, writers, and editors. When you read a piece or hear a story on the radio that you like, let the people responsible for that story know. When a publication or a show covers your organization, drop the editor or producer a handwritten note to say thanks. This kind of advice is, of course, just a matter of basic manners, but it is amazing to me how infrequently people heed it. If you want to guarantee that your organization won't be covered by the media, complain to the media about not being covered. Complimenting a producer about a story she did on a topic not related to your organization is a much better approach than complaining about her covering another chorus in your community.
Your goal should be to build relationships with the journalists in your area and to establish a reputation for being good to work with. When your organization is covered, set the stage to be invited back to a particular program or to be covered again by a publication. If all of us who love choral music can state the case for our organizations effectively, then more people may be convinced that they will enjoy the wonderful art that is at the core of our missions.
This article is adapted from The Voice, Spring 2010.
