From: a New York City classical music and dance writer
To: Me, just now
I would like to take a moment to thank you for never sending me emails with all caps subject lines. It is an affliction of many publicists, and actually makes me less likely to want to read the email.
I also assume that marking all your press releases “High Importance” gets pretty annoying to writers. And including huge attachments, I would imagine.
Calling all journalists! What do publicists do that annoy you the most?
[Some comique is probably going to say “blog”.]
I’ve been pretty fortunate in my dealings with publicists in that so far, only one person has got my goat
A major label [i.e. someone who should know better] pitched me for a record review, which is totally welcome, but the tone of the pitch implied that the artist was so important that I was lucky to be given the privilege of listening to the album.
When the review copy finally arrived, it was simply a burned disc in a white envelope with no liner notes, track listing or anything.
Needless to say, that one didn’t make it on the blog.
Sending press releases in which the titles of every play, movie and TV show is typed in all caps. Argh! If I cut and paste the info onto my blog (or, heaven help us, into the newwspaper, as the publicists would like me to do), I have to change every damn title by hand into italics. Where did this capital-letter fixation come from? They’re harder to read, people! (Not to mention wrong, but correct punctuation doesn’t seem to stop people these days.)
I’m not a real journalist, so your mileage may vary, but. . .
Sending me press releases for stuff that there is no way I would ever want to cover. I’m an individual person at a niche publication, not an editor at a big publication who can farm out stories to appropriate staff.
Unhelpful subject lines. I don’t even read most of the press releases I get, so if your subject line doesn’t get me interested I won’t even see your beautiful prose. I don’t like to admit how few press releases I read, but them’s the facts, and other people (especially other bloggers) are probably the same way.
Furthermore, not so much a thing that people get wrong as a thing that should be easy to get right — if you’re pitching something that I’m not already familiar with, give me an easy way to get a sample right away. A link at the top of the press release to a youtube video, or an audio stream, or something.
Yesterday I received a pitch for a feature idea from a pr. It wasn’t quite right for the magazine I edit, but being a benevolent soul I suggested a way it might work. Only to receive a brusque brush-off in response. But but but – they pestered me (I spluttered, uselessly). Felt obscurely like I’d been dumped by a person who hit on me. Which can’t be right…
Don’t send me press releases where the only thing in the subject line is “press release.” No doh, people! I’m the press; it’s a release; tell me something about yourself that i DON’T know! You’ve got about 15 seconds to get my attention here, or less… use it! Plus, I use my inbox as a to-do list, and that’s not going to help me remember whatever helpful thing I was going to do for you….
Absolutely — publicists who just put “press release” in their subject line haven’t thought this through.
But then how about press release emails that make me click twice to read the release? Click once to open the email, then discover that the release is in an attachment, and I have to click again to read it.
Worse still — the NY Philharmonic, which puts (or used to put) the releases on its website, so when I click the link, I have to wait for my browser to load. And probably click again to read the particular release I want, but I’ve never had the patience to go through the whole process.
Publicists — put the release in the body of your e-mail. Graphics and all. It can be done.
Another annoyance: publicists who send CDs in complicated packaging. The worst offender wraps the CDs in tight bubblewrap inside the mailing envelope, which itself is sealed tightly shut. I’ve been getting CDs in the mail for many years, in all kinds of packaging. Never, or virtually never, have any been damaged. Seems to me, then, that the simplest packaging is the best.
And I’d prefer packaging that doesn’t have bubblewrap built into it. Why? Because when I’m opening my publicist mail, I have to separate the envelopes into bubblewrap (not recyclable) and non-bubblewrap (recyclable). Don’t give me extra chores, when there’s no need for it.
I’ve saved this one for a separate comment. The worst thing publicists do — worse than making us click multiple times, worse than not understanding what the press people/bloggers they contact are likely to cover — is not to tell us why we should care about what they’re pitching.
For instance, I once got a CD set of a venerable but minor pianist playing all the Beethoven sonatas. A week or so later comes a phone call from the publicist, asking if I’m going to write about it. Neither in the press release nor the phone call was there any reason I should care, apart from the usual boilerplate bio, with the standard empty superlatives and quotes from musty reviews.
On the phone, I was brat enough to ask the poor assistant or intern or junior publicist who made the call if there was anything distinctive about the way this pianist played Beethoven. Of course they couldn’t think of anything. I’d bet the subject hadn’t even come up in any of their planning.
Which made the whole publicity enterprise pointless. Why shouldn’t I call the pianist, or his manager, and tell them that they’ve wasted their money? The publicist will send out CDs and make calls, and then tell the artist or manager that, look, they’ve contacted all these writers and bloggers, and, hey, none decided to write anything, but what can you do? Well, you can write a serious pitch that actually says something.
The worst thing I’ve ever seen a publicist do (and I’m so tempted to mention his name): At a major, well-attended, lavishly expensive press event, seat the NY Times writer next to himself — the publicist — instead of next to the people whose major new project was being publicized. And then (from what I was told) talk the Times writer’s ear off about other clients. That’s just about criminal.