Life’s a Twitch, Part 1

About a week ago, I had coffee with an arts marketer from out of town. She mentioned going to the opera with a prominent critic, and having–a meal or a meeting, I don’t remember–with a prominent New York presenter. She was by no means bragging about these things, just telling me what she had been up to during her trip. No judging, I started, but if you’ve never worked in the city, how do you know these people? “Through Twitter!” she said.

I’ve never joined Facebook, and I had no burning desire to join Twitter. It’s Thursday at 11:40pm, and I’m watching the Phillies (hopefully) beat the Dodgers, answering e mails and writing this blog post. Point being I work a lot, so the thought of adding personal Facebook and Twitter updating to the mix makes me want to move to Tahiti and sell sunblock. But Twitter for work purposes got my attention (label me with whatever -aholic you must), and I started looking into which publicists and which journalists were active members of the twitterati. More importantly, which publicists and journalists interacted with each other on Twitter. Were stories being pitched? Introductions being made? Contacts being found?

I wasn’t about to write this post without using Twitter myself, so on I
went, last Friday morning. I liked designing my little page
(obviously), I liked having a forum to mention that I was excited to
meet Thomas Cott at The Chase
Brock Experience the night before. Oooo Matt from Carnegie HALL is
FOLLOWING me. My hero! A friend in the wilderness! I start following
Hilary, Gabriel and The King’s Singers and wait about 10 minutes for
them to notice me (Hilary and The King’s Singers still do not care
about my Tweets. I find this awkward.) By 7:30pm, I was unimpressed.
Why were my clients not @thelateshowwithdavidletterman, yet?? I’m
bored; let’s take this baby out for a spin! My client Sondra had gone
through a series of unfortunate ordeals over the past few days that I
thought were media-worthy. Surely the New York Times blog ArtsBeat has a Twitter account.

I
had this drink at the Dove Parlour in the West Village once that
supposedly had absinthe in it. Everything I know about absinthe I
learned from Moulin Rouge, so I sat on a barstool waiting for
Tinkerbell to fly out and summon me, all the while warning my friends
that I might start to act crazy.  Posting the above Tweet was
basically the same: lots of devilish anticipation with zero result. At
least this didn’t leave a nasty licorice taste in my mouth. After a
half hour I e mailed a contact at the Times and explained the Sondra situation, and a blurb was in Arts, Briefly on Monday. Who says e mail is dead?  (Did everyone notice that was the Most E-mailed Story on the Wall Street Journal website for about two days?)

At that point I’d been on Twitter for, oh, eight hours. So I tried it again yesterday:

Ever
so slightly more success! (Although not actual success, because Eric’s
concert isn’t getting reviewed.) No response on Twitter, but I did hear
from someone that no one would be reviewing the concert. But again,
that was via e mail about other work matters, not a dedicated response
to my Twitch. I didn’t expect a dedicated response; I don’t know what I
expected. Tinkerbell again, probably.

My antics aside, real live
classical music publicists do interact with real live classical music
journalists very day. Since Friday is Interview Day here on Life’s a Pitch, we’ll hear from the following publicists and journalists about how they use the Lord Twitter tomorrow.

For the Publicists, we have:
@cjpr: Christina Jensen, Christina Jensen PR
@dotdotdottweet: Steven Swartz, DotDotDot Music
@SarahBaird: Sarah Baird, Boosey and Hawkes
@BklsweetMedia: Amanda Sweet, Bucklesweet Media
@CarnegieMatt: Matt Carlson, Carnegie Hall
@glennpetry, @seanmgross, @PhilipWilder: Glenn Petry, Sean Gross and Philip Wilder, 21C Media Group
@mlaffs: Maura Lafferty, New Century Chamber Orchestra

And for the Journalists, we have:
@nightafternight: Steve Smith, New York Times, Time Out New York, et al.
@anastasiat: Anastasia Tsioulcas, Gramophone, Billboard, et al.
@gsandow: Greg Sandow, Wall Street Journal, ArtsJournal et al.
@sethcolterwalls: Seth Colter Walls, Newsweek, et al.

I’m @amandaameer, and this post was too long to Tweet.